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OUT OF HIS HEAD, 



A ROMANCE. 



There was something strange, people whispered- His grand- 
father was so before him. It nins in the family. — Thackaray. 



EDITED BY 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 



SUP.'.OOUNCIU, %A#* 

SO.- JURISDICTION- .^.,^ 



NEW YORK: 

Carleton^ Publisher^ 413 Broadway. 

(late Kudd & Carlkton.) 
M DCCC LXII. 










< 



d- 



Entered according to J-ct c." Congress, in the year 1862, by 

T. B. ALDKICn, 

Iq the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of 

New York. 

tUte^iary of supreme Council 
Aug 10,1940 



CONTENTS. 

Chap. Page. 

I. DE. PENDEGRAST 11 

II. BY THE SEASHORE 18 

HI. THE ESTRANGEMEJfT 22 

IV. A CATASTROPHE. .... 31 

V. THE FLIGHT 36 

VI. TIRED TO DEATH. .... 43 

VII. AN ARRIVAL 49 

Vin. DARK DATS. 55 

IX. AGNES. 65 

X. THE RED DOMINO. .... 69 

XI. THE DANSEUSE. 82 

XII. A IVITSTERY. . ... 91 

XIII. THOU ART THE MAN 102 

XIV. Paul's confession 105 

XV. A long journey 114 



VI CONTENTS. 

XVI. OUT OF HIS HEAD 118 

XVII. BURNING A WITCH. 

XVIII. TWO HUNDRED YEARS OLD. . . . 142 
NOTE 145 

TAUL LYNDE'S SKETCH BOOK. 

PERE ANTOINE'S DATE PALM. . . . 149 

A WORD rOR THE TOWN 162 

mss hepzibah's lover. .... 178 

THE LADY WITH THE BALMORAL. . . 192 

THE CUP AND THE LIP 206 



NOTE. 

The manuscript whicli comprises this volume was found 
among the papers of the late Paul Lynde, and placed in 
my hands, by the publishers, for revision. 

It is usual to accompany a posthumous work with 
some account of its author : in the present instance, the 
friends of the writer object to this, and I am permitted 
only to say that Mr. Lynde, — personally a stranger to 
me, — was the victim of an hereditary peculiarity, which, 
increasing with his years, at length forced him to retreat 
from the world, to one of those beneficent asylums estab- 
lished for such unfortunates. There he wrote, dreamed, 
and indulged in his vagaries to the end. 

" And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less, 
An old and strange affection of his house. 
Himself, too, had wierd seizures, heaven knows what. 
On a sudden, in the midst of men and day, 
And while he walked and talked as heretofor' 
He seemed to move among a world of ghosts 
And feel himself the shadow of a dream." 



Vlll NOTE. 

Of this Romance, produced under sucli unusual cir- 
cumstances, it is not my province to speak. The reader 
himself will see, beneath the sombre surface of the wri- 
ter's words, the particular humor of the man. 



OUT OF HIS HEAD. 



There lived an ancient legend in our house. 
Some sorcerer, whom a for-oflf grandsire burnt. 
Because he cast no shadow, had foretold, 
Dying, that none of all our blood should know 
The shadow from the substance, and that one 
Should come to fight with shadows, and to fall. 

— Tennyson. 



OUT OF HIS HEAD. 



CHAPTER I. 



Dr. Pendegrast. 




HAT is this, Lynde ? " 

Dr. Penclegrast had walked 
yjC^io the farther end of my room, 
^^) and stood looking at a pale, un- 
^- bloomed flower sealed in a glass 
■ 1^ globe. The globe rested on a 
slight Gothic pedestal, and was 
covered by a yard or two of 
gauze, thrown over it carelessly. The doctor had 
drawn aside the covering, and was regarding tl ' 

flower with an air of interest. 

" That," said I, closing one finger in my book, 

" is where I keep the soul of Cecil Roylstone — 

shut up in the calyx." 



n Out of ids Head. 

The doctor started. 

" The soul — really ! That is quite odd, now. 
You never told me of this, Lynde." 

Dr. Pendegrast is a phj^sician of considerable 
repute with whom I have recently become ac- 
quainted. A singular intimacy has sprung up 
between us. Dr. Pendegrast labors under the 
delusion that he is treating me professionally for 
some sort of mental disorder, and I, indulging the 
good-natured whim, throw his prescriptions out of 
the window, and in the meantime enjoy un- 
restrained intercourse with the doctor, who is not 
only a skillful practitioner, but a thinker, and — 
what is seldom the case with thinkers — a fine 
conversationalist. 

He frequently drops in to spend an hour with 
me, and appears to derive much satisfaction in 
examining the microscopes, galvanic batteries, 
wooden models, and various knick-knacks in fluor 
spar — the accumulation of years — with which 
my apartment is crowded. The place has quite 
the air of a miniature museum. 



Out of his Head. 13 

Dr. Pendegrast stood looking at the imprisoned 
flower with fresh curiosity. I drew my chair 
nearer to the fire, and fell into a brown study. 
The doctor's question had indirectly suggested to 
me the expediency of writing out the odd experi- 
ences of my life. 

There comes to every man, sooner or later, a 
time when he pauses and looks down on his Past, 
regarding it as an existence separate from himself. 
As one in a dream, stands beside his own coffin, 
gazing upon his own features. That moment of 
retrospection was mine. 

Dr. Pendegrast placed the tip of his forefinger 
on the globe. 

" And who is Cecil Roylstone? " 

" The woman I loved, long ago." 

« Dead ? " 

" Many years since." 

The doctor mused. 

" And her soul," you say — " 

"Passed into that flower the day she was 
buried.'" 



14 Out of liis Head. 

"But the flower," said Dr. Pendegrast, stoop- 
ing down, " is as fresh as if it were plucked 
yesterday." 

" True. By a process well known to chemists, 
I have preserved the lily in its original freshness ; 
even the dew still glistens on it.- See ! Cecil's 
breath has clouded the glass. The flower is 
moving ! Mute, mute, — if she would but speak 
to me ! " 

" And you really think this pretty world is in- 
habited by a spirit? " 

" There's not the slightest doubt of it." 

" Would it not be well," remarked Dr. Pende- 
grast, lifting his eyebrows speculatively, " to look 
into this ? For our own satisfaction, you know, 
to say nothing of the spirit, which must be very 
uncomfortable in such snug quarters. Suppose, 
for instance, we take a peep in at the petals ? " 

" Not for worlds ! Our grosser sense would fail 
to perceive the soul within. I have thought of it. 
The thin shell which separates us, has baffled my 
endeavor to reach her. Once I dared to dream it 



Out of his Head. 15 

possible to hold communication with Cecil — by 
means of a small magnetic telegraph, my own 
invention. But the experiment threatened to an- 
nihilate the flower. Since then, it has lain un- 
touched, sealed hermetically from the air, in its 
transparent prison." 

Dr. Pendegrast smiled. 

" You are laughing at me, doctor," said I, 
sharply. 

" Not I ! It's the most interesting circumstance 
that ever came under my observation." 

'• No doubt it sounds strangely to you, doctor. 
I have, before now, encountered people who 
thought me a little out on the subject, and said so 
flatly." 

" They were very injudicious." 

" To be sure ; but I always observed that they 
were persons of inferior intellect — believing only 
what they could comprehend, they were necessarily 
contracted. To metaphysicians, students of life 
and death, the facts which I could unfold relative 



16 Out of his Head. 

to this flower and other matters, ■would afford 
material for serious speculation." 

*' I believe you," said Dr. Pendegrast. 

" And I am strongly inclined to give the scien- 
tific world the benefit of my memoirs. Indeed,, it 
is a part of my destiny to do so." 

" You delight me," said Dr. Pendegrast. " Do 
it at once. It will be a healthful relaxation. You 
are working too hard on that infernal machine of 
youre." 

" You mean the Moon-Apparatus." 

" I beg vour pardon, I meant the Moon- Ap- 
paratus." 

*' I will commence my memoii's to-morrow." 

" And I shall hold it a privilege," said the 
doctor courteously, drawing on his glove, " to 
follow the progress of your work." 

" You shall do so." 

Dr. Pendegrast took his leave. 

" O, Lpide, Lynde ! " I heard him exclaim as 
he went down stairs. 

That man appreciates me. 



Out of his Head. 17 

A week has elapsed since this conversation oc- 
curred, and I still linger at the threshhold of my 
confessions. I half dread to ring up the curtain on 
such a sorrowful play as it is, for the dramatis 
personge are the shades of men and women long 
since dead. Their graves lie scattered over the 
world, noi'th, south, east, and west. It seems 
almost cruel to bring them together on the stage 
again. Who that has fretted his brief hour here 
would care to return ? Yet I must summon 
these shadows, for a moment, from the dark. 



18 



Out of Ids Head. 



CHAPTER II. 



By the Seashore. 




N tlie summer of 18 — I occupied 
an old house near the seashore, in 
New England. The beach, a mile 
off, stretched along the indented 
coast, looking as if it were an im- 
>mense mottled serpent that had 
been suddenly petrified in the midst 
of its writhings. On the right, a 
rumed fort stared at the ocean, over the chalky 
crags. At the back of the house were some two 
hundred acres of woodland, moistened here and 
there by ponds filled with marvellous white lilies. 
The weather-beaten roofs and steeples of the town 
glanced through the breezy elm trees on the left ; 



Out of his Head. 19 

while far away, over lengths of pastures and sullen 
clumps of pines, Mount Agamenticus rose up like 
a purple mist. 

The scenery has stamped itself into my brain — 
the desolate fort, staring with a blind, stunned 
look through rain and sunshine ; the merciless 
coast ; the ragged ledges, nurturing only a few 
acrid berries ; the forest full of gloomy sounds ; 
the antique spires in the distance ; and, over all, 
the loose gray clouds. 

I had come to the New Hampshire seaboard for 
the benefit of my failing health. Having spent 
the greater portion of my life in an inland manu- 
facturing town, than which nothing could be more 
common-place, the wild panorama of the coast 
opened on me like an enchanted realm. A cold, gi'ay 
realm, but enchanted. I avoided society. The 
sea and the shifting clouds were society enough. 
The solitude that would have driven most men to 
distraction, was pregnant with meaning. It left 
me free, for once, to breathe, and think, and feel. 

At night I wandered along the beach, watching 



20 Out of his Head. 

the points of light that dipt and rose in the dis- 
tance, and the sails that shimmered ghost-like, for 
a second, in the offing, and vanished. But more 
than all I brooded over the broken image of the 
moon floating on the water : ihat filled me like a 
picture by Claude ; it led me into a region of new 
thought, and here I first conceived the project of 
of my Moon- Apparatus, which, when completed, 
will dissolve the misty theories that have deluded 
man for the past five centuries. I haunted the 
seashore. I lay on the rocks from sundown till 
midnight, shaping the vast Idea that had grown 
up within me. 

My intercourse with the village, near by, was 
restricted to one family — the Roylstones. I 
might say restricted to one person ; for Captain 
Roylstone was always at sea ; his wife had long 
since been laid at rest in the rustic churchyard ; 
and only Cecil, who lived with an elderly com- 
panion, a distant connection, I believe, represented 
the family. 

How we met, or how Cecil's fate and mine 



Out of his Head. 21 

became irrevocably linked, seems so strange and 
vague to me, that I shall not attempt to speak of 
it. It was this woman's melancholy destiny to 
love me : it was mine to return the passion a hun- 
dred fold, and follow her to the very margin of 
that mysterious world wherein she eluded me. 
Wherein she still eludes me. 

Alas ! what right had I to love, knowing, as I 
have known fi'om boyhood, the doom that hangs 
over my head, suspended by a tenure as slight as 
that which held the sword of Damocles ? 

To-morrow it may fall ! 

The arrogant retina of the eye sometimes re- 
fuses to give back the image it has received. Dis- 
solution alone can break the charmed pictvire ; 
and even after death, objects of terror and beauty 
have been seen to fade away reluctantly from this 
magical mirror. I have read, Bomewhere, of a 
German oculist, who traced the murderer of a 
lady in Gottingen, by discovering, at a post- 
mortem examination, the likeness of the assassin 



m Out of his Head. 

photographed on those curious net-like membranes, 
the retinas. 

When I am dead, the face of a fair woman will 
be found indelibly engraved on my eyes — not in 
faint lines and curves, but sharply, as if the features 
had been cut out on steel by the burin of an artist. 
Yet I can but poorly describe the idyllic grace and 
beauty of Cecil Roylstone. 

Her hair was dark brown, and, in its most 
becomms arrano-ement, drawn into one massivs 
coil over the forehead, gi^^g her brows a Greek-like 
stateliness. Her eyes were those unusual ojos 
verdes, large and lucent, which the Spanish poets 
mention as being the finest type. The mouth 
would have been perfect, but for a slight blemish, 
visible only at times, on the upper lip. Perhaps 
her face was a shade too pale, for perfection, may 
be too pensive, in repose — but how can I write 
of Cecil as a mere portrait, when she, herself, ir. 
her infinite sweetness, seems to pass before me ! 

Again she is walking, in her simple white dress, 
by the seaside. The moon drifts from cloud to 



Out of his Head. 23 

cloud, edging the gray -with silver, and, far off, the 
sea sparkles. A plain gold cross on her bosom 
catches the moonlifiht. The salt breeze lifts the 
braids of her hair, and blows back the folds of her 
dress. I sit on the rocks -watching her. 

Again ^ve are lounging along the sunny road, 
on our way to town. It is an afternoon in May ; 
the trees are in ftill bloom, peach and apple. 
Cecil is laughing, -n-ith an accent like music. I 
see her lissome form in the checkered sunshine, 
her feet, tripping on in front of me, among the 
blossoms. I hardly know which are the blossoms. 
Now she is walking demurely at my side, her 
fingers locked in mine, and the sleepy sea-port 
with its brown roofs and whitewashed chimneys, 
comes out distinctly against the neutral tint of the 
sky, like a picture on a wizard's glass. 

Again I am sitting on the porch of the old 
house, dreaming of her. I hear the sound of a 
horse's hoofs beating on the dusty road, and then 
Cecil — as if she had leaped out of my brain — 
dashes up to the garden-gate, on the alert black 



24 Out of his Head. 

mare which her father lias sent home. In that 
sea-green riding-habit and feather, she is a picture, 
I take it, for Memory to press in his thumbed and 
dog's-eared volume. I pat the sleek neck of the 
mustang, as I speak with Cecil. I look up, and 
she is gone. I see her riding madly along the 
orchard walls, shaking down the blooms, in the 
sunset. 

Riding away from me ! 



Out of his Head. 



25 



CHAPTER III. 



The Estrangement. 




E were unspeakably happy 
in that dream which follows 
(^ the confessions of two hearts 
; each all in all to the other. 
" Our foimal engagement was 
but delayed until Captain 
Roylstone, who was ma- 
king an East Indian voy- 
age, should return and sanction it. The future 
lay before us like a map on which each bright 
tint melts into one more brilliant. We were 
wildly happy ; but not long. 

The occult power that moulds my thought, 
speaks my words, and even times the pulsations of 



26 Out of liis Head. 

my heart, glided in between us. We had been en- 
gaged but three weeks, when I became assured 
that Cecil had taken a sudden aA-ersion to me. It 
was evident she soug-ht to avoid our usual inter- 
A^ews ; and when we met, was constrained and 
absent-minded. The color, what little she had, 
shrunk from her cheek ; the touch of her fingers 
was chilly and nerveless. AVhen I questioned 
Cecil, she looked at me wearily, and turned away. 
Sometimes with an impatient gesture, sometimes 
coldly. 

One nicrht — I never hear the monotonous wash 
of the waves, but I think of it, — we sat on the 
rocks. Cecil wrapt in her shawl. It was Oc- 
tober, and the winds were growing fi'osty. One 
star, in a stormy cincture, struggled through the 
dark. The sea moaned, as it moans only in 
autumn. The clouds leaned down, hungry, tragic 
faces, Hstening. The landscape seemed cut in 
granite, shai-p and gray. No color anywhere. 
There was somethmg of an expression of human 



Out of iiiis Head. 27 

despair in the half twiliglit that brooded over it. 
It was so hopeless. 

Presently the moon rose to the surface of the 
water, hke a drowned bodj, bleached and swollen. 
It distressed me ; and when, at length, it lifted its 
full disc slowly up among the clouds, I felt a 
sense of relief: the cool clean light revived my 
sjiirits, like a draught of wine. I began spealving, 
rapidly, half to myself, partly to Cecil. I forget 
the train of reflection that led to it, but, at last, I 
touched on the invention of the Moox-Apparatus, 
to which I had recently given so much study. 

Then Cecil, who had been sitting silent and 
motionless, abruptly bent forward, and took ray 
face between her hands. 

" Poor Paul ! " 

She drew back, then, one hand resting on her 
lap, inanimate, like a sculptured hand I had seen 
somewhere. 

" Cecil I " 

She turned away hastily. 

" You are cruel, Cecil." 



28 Out of ills Head. 

" No. Do not say that. I — I suffer." 

And she uttered a low moan, like a child. 

" Suffer ? " 

" Bitterly ! " 

"You are hiding some painful news from me. 
What is it?" 

Cecil made no reply for a moment: then I 
heard her murmuring to herself, 

" It was an evil day when we met. I wish it 
had never been." 

" An evil day, Cecil ? You kill me with your 
strangeness. Your very breath seems to freeze 
me. 

" Let it ! I think I am dying — it is so sudden 
and terrible — but you do not understand me — 
poor Paul ! " 

" What is sudden and terrible ? ' 

" Nothing." 

My fingers sunk into her arm until she gave a 
quick cry of pain. 

" Why do you call me ' poor Paul ? ' " 
"I — I cannot tell." 



Out of his Head. 29 

" For mercy's sake, Cecil, say one word that 
has sense in it — if you have any love left for me." 

Cecil threw her arms around my neck, and 
locked her fingers, holding me so. 

" How you tremble, child ! What has hap- 
pened to trouble you ? Something, I know — 
your father? You have had letters from him, 
and he is sick ? Tell me, little wife." 

" No, no, no ! " cried Cecil, recoiling. 

For an instant the indistinct blemish on her lip 
glowed warmly, like an opal, and faded. 

" No, no, no ? " I repeated to myself. " How 
strange ! " 

Then the three monosyllables slipped from my 
mind, and, oddly enough, I commenced a mental 
construction of the Moon-Apparatus, forgetful 
of Cecil and our limited world of sorrows. 

"• The powerful glasses," said I half aloud, 
'' ';]inll draw the rays of tlie moon into the copper 
cylinders : the action of the chemicals, let in 
through the valves will congeal the atomic matter : 



30 Out ol" his Head. 

then comes the granulating process ; and after the 
calclna, — " 

" Merciful heaven ! " cried Cecil, breaking in 
on me, " is it so ? I have waited, and hoped, 
and prayed. Paul, look at me ; take me in your 
arms, once, and kiss me. Look at me long ! 
Never any more ! Poor, poor Paul. O misery ! 
that I should so love a — " 

With this, Cecil tore herself away from me, 
and, in spite of my cries, fled toward the town. 
She melted into the moonlight, past the church- 
yard, and was gone. What could it mean ? 

Then the terrible truth flashed upon me — 
Cecil had lost her mind ! 



Out of Ills Head. 31 



CHAPTER IV. 
A Catastkophe. 

T is well that providence keeps our 
destiny under lock and key, dealing 
it out only by morsels. The whole 
of it, at once, would kill us. Sup- 
^*^pose a man, verging on the prime 
^of life, should chance to come 
across his full-grown Biography ? 
It would not be pleasant reading, to 
say it mildly. 

I walked home that night, bewildered. The 
sky was blanched with incessant lightning, and 
dull peals of thunder broke in the far east, like 
the sound of distant artillery. There was a fear- 
ful gale, afterwards, I was told. A merchantman, 




32 Out of Iiis Head. 

with all on board, went down at daybreak, on the 
shoals off Gosport Light. 

Spiteful drops of rain whistled by me before T 
reached the door of my isolated abode. I hurried 
through the grape-arbor, and had entered the 
laboratory on the ground-floor, in the right wing 
of the building, when an accident occurred to 
which I cannot even now refer with composure. 

When I reflect on the months of wasting toil and 
the lavish outlay, rendered futile by a moment's 
awkwardness, I am again plunged into despair. 

A candle, with matches, always stood on the 
laboratory mantle-piece, for my convenience. In 
searching for these matches, which somebody had 
removed, I inadvertently came in contact with the 
Moon-Apparatus. 

It tottered — and fell with a crash ! 

A sulphuric vapor immediately diffused itself 
tliroughout the apartment, followed l)y an ex 
plosion that shook the house from garret to base- 
ment. With the flash and concussion, a keen 
pain shot through my temples. 



Out of his Head. 33 

Then a darkness came over me. 

This darkness must have covered a period of 
several months ; for when I escaped from it, there 
was something in the singino; of birds, and the 
brushina: of foliage against the casement, that told 
of spring. I lay in my own chamber, and an old 
woman was killing flies with a silk apron. 

" What is the time — of year ? " I asked faintly. 

The woman came to the bedside, and looked at 
me LIBRARY 

"'^' OF THE 

" Go to sleep. SO.-.jurisdiction- 

I shrunk from her, and turning my face to the 
wall, tried to conjecture what had taken place. 

I come home one October night from a walk 
with Cecil. 

I fall over something in the laboratory. 

It explodes. 

My head aches. 

I open my eyes, and it is June ! the flowers 

growing, the robins singing, an old woman killing 

flies. I could make nothing out of it. 
•2* 



34 Out of his Head. 



" Let what is broken, so remain. 
The gods are hard to reconcile : 
'Tis hard to settle order once ag;xin. 
There is confusion worse than death, 
Ti'ouble on trouble, pain on pain." 



When the Doctor came, — Dr. Molineux, of 
the village, — he attempted, in a hesitating way, 
to explain things. I had, he said, been taken 
unexpectedly ill in my "work-shop, where I was 
discovered, one morning, by the person who 
brought me my meals. I was found doubled up 
among a confused mass of shattered cog-wheels, 
steel pistons, copper cylinders, alembics, and glass 
retorts. Somewhat battered and considei*ably sense- 
less. It was supposed that I had been stunned by 
the explosion of some unknown machine, while 
engaged in scientific experiments. 

Here the Doctor gave a short dry laugh. I am 
sure I don't know why. I had been long and 
dangerously ill, he said. 

" Non compos ment — " the Doctor paused 
abruptly, and coughed. " But you are doing well 
now, and will soon be a new man," he added. 



Out of his Head. 35 

A new man ? To be somebody else, the 
antithesis of myself, would indeed be a comfort. 

Tlie remembrance of all that had happened 
gradually dawned on me. Patience, patience. I 
could only lie and think of Cecil, while the long 
days, and the longer nights, dragged on. 

Finally the Doctor gave me permission to walk 
the length of our garden. I paced up and down 
several times under the arbor, unconcernedly ; 
for the brownie nurse was on guard. My eyes 
roamed off to the town. I could see the square 
chimneys of Cecil's house, above the tree-tops, on 
the other side of the bridge. 

Watching my chance, I unlatched the gate 
noiselessly, and stood in the open road. 

The crisp grass scarcely bent under my tread, 
as I stole swiftly away from my chaperone, who, 
I am now convinced, w^as merely a harmless 
lunatic. 



36 



Out of his Head. 



CHAPTER V. 



The Flight. 



,;,^^ HE day liad opened sunnily, but 
one of those sudden foors which 

o 

blow from the sea, had drifted in, 
and hung over the town like a pall 
'?of smoke. It caught at the sharp 
spires and trailed along the flat 
roofs. At intervals, a gleam of 
light played through the funeral 

folds. I thought the place was burning : it had a 

disagreeable habit of catching on fire periodically. 

A history of the town would involve a series of 

conflagrations. 

As I crossed the bridge, the cloud of fog grew 

darker and heavier, pressing down on the houses. 




Out of m Head. 17 

The boom of a large bell broke sullenly through 
the air. It was tolling. 

Somethinor in the sound arrested me, nor me 
alone, for a decrepit old man, driving a yoke of 
oxen, stopped in the middle of the bridge, and 
listened. 

•• Is it a fire ? " I asked, walking at his side. 
•• A fire in town?" 

•• Ay, ay," returned the man, vacantly, hke a 
deaf person ; " for old Mrs. Weston, or Capt'n 
Roylstone's child. I dunno which." 

•• Cecil Roylstone I " 

" Ay ; she's bin dyin' this sis month." 

"Dead?" 

Dead, said the bell. 

The bridge reeled under my feet. 

" Xo, old man ! you lie to me." 

•• Ay, ay," he said, musingly, " misfortune kind 
o" follows som^ families. Only last fall her father 
was wrecked il:ht off Gosport Light here, in sight 
o' land." 

I have a dim impression of intending to hurl 



38 Out 'of his llrad. 

him Into tlio luill-dain, among tlio slijipery cel- 
ii'rass ; but as I olanccd up 1 brliold Cocil quietly 
walkinsr at tho tarthor oiul of the bridge. 

She turned and beckoned me. 

Loosening the oUl man's arm, I liastened after 
Cecil, who moved leisurely down the hill, and 
took the road that made a ddtoiir by the house. 

" Cecil ! " 

l>ut she olidod on with unaltered gait. 

•" She will stop at the porch," I thought ; but 
no : Dr. Molineux was standing in the door-way. 
lie hailed me as I hurried by. 

'* Well, where now, ]\Ir. Lynde ? " 

" I'll return presently. I wish to speak with 
the lady who has just passed." 

" Lady ? " said the Doctor, eyeing me anxiously. 
*' Nobody has passed here this halt-hour — no 
lady, surely." 

" What ! *' I exclaimed, halting with amaze- 
ment at such a barefaced falsehood, ''did not that 
lady " — pointing 'to Cecil, mIio had paused at a 



Out of his Ikad. 39 

bend in the road — "did not that lady just pass 
within two yards of you ? " 

And I looked at the Doctor severely. 

" I see no one," replied the Doctor, following 
the direction of my finger. 

It had been my opinion for sometime that my 
poor friend was deranged. This, coupled with 
the fact that I once caught him in his sanctum 
reading Neville on Insanity, was conclusive. 

" I see no one," he repeated. 

" Then you must be blind, or stujjid." 

I instantly repented of my brusqueness. Surely, 
his infirmity was no fault of his. So I approached 
him, and said kindly, 

" My dear doctor, you should at once make 
your situation known to your friends. You really 
should." 

With which words I left him. 

Dr. Molineux stared at me. 

There stood Cecil. The June air drew back 
the clustered coils of hair that fell over her 
shoulders, and I then first noticed the unearthly 



40 Out of his Head. 

pallor of her face. It was like a piece of pure 
Carrara marble. 

Cecil seemed to smile upon me imploringly, as 
she turned into a briery path which branched off 
from the highway, and led to that tract of wood- 
land which I mentioned in describing the location 
of my dwelling. I followed. 

Her pace now became accelerated. It was 
with difficulty that I could keep the flying white 
dress in sight. 

On the verge of the forest she paused, and 
faced me with a hectic light in her eyes. It was 
but for an instant, then she plunged into the 
dense wood. 

An acfonizino; fancy occurred to me. I con- 
nected Cecil's wild look with the still deep ponds 
which lay within the shadow of the vast wood- 
land. The thought gave wings to my feet ; I 
darted after her like an arrow, tearing myself on 
the vines and briers that stretched forth a million 
wiry fingers to impede my progress. 

We were nearing the largest pond in the wood. 



Out of his Head. 41 

Unless Cecil shovild alter her coiu'se, that would 
prevent further flight. 

This circular piece of water lay, as it were, in 
an immense green basin, the banks on every side 
sloping to the edge of the pond, where the 
cardinal-floAvers bent in groups, staring at the 
reflection of their flushed faces. At the belt of 
maples enclosing the sheet of water, Cecil stopped 
irresolutely. I would have clasped her in my 
arms, but she escaped me, and ran swiftly toward 
the pond. Then I heard a splash not so loud as 
would be made by dropping -a pebble into the. 
water. I leaped half-way do^^'n the slope. 

Cecil had disappeared. 

Near the bank, a circle in the pond widened, 
and widened, and was lost in space. A single 
silver bubble floated among the tangled weeds 
tliat fringed the lip of the shore, and as I 
looked, this bubble opened, and out of it imlo- 
Icntly rose a superb white Water-Lily. 

It was no use to look for Cecil — there she 
was I 



42 . Out of Lis Head. 

" You had better come home now," said Dr. 
Molineux, touching me on the shoulder. 

When we reached the main-road, a funeral war, 
j^assing along slowly, slowly. 

People sometimes smile, half- incredulously, when 
I tell them these things : then I point to that 
"white flower, there, in the glass globe. 



Out of his Head. 



43 



CHAPTER VI. 



Tired to Death. 




OW that I approach the second 
^ important epoch of my life — 
the second link in the chain 1 am 
Qj forging — the joy and anguish 
■which came to me with Cecil 
Roylstone, must be laid aside, 
like the fragments of a dream 
that lie perdu in the memoiy, 
until some odd moment. 

I was residing in New Orleans, an invalid. A 
perusal of some of W — 's letters by a wood fire 
in the north, had drawn me southward in search 
of lost \'itality. I am not sure it was the most 
efficacious move ; but mine is a malady full of 



k^lP 



44 Out of Ids Head. 

surmises, and hopes, and disappointment. Why 
do I speak of myself? I am only the walking- 
gentleman in this particular act of the melodrame 
— the Scaramouch that glides in to darken things. 
The hero -waits at the side-scenes for his cue. 

Entei% A Shadow. 

Mark Rowland, at twenty-four, was tired to 
death. His psychological sickness was not occa- 
sioned by varied experience, like that of the cynic 
in' the play, who had seen everything, done every- 
thing, and found nothing in it. He came to his 
weariness without that painful iteration. 

There is a certain kind of woman who becomes 
physically perfect long before her heart is de- 
veloped. 

If she chance to have much beauty, she is 
dangerous beyond belief, and should not be left 
unchained to destroy people. 

She goes about, seeking whom she may devour. 

It is an uncertain leopardess : it kills with 
strokes softer than satin. 

Mr. Rowland, shortly after leaving college, was 



Out of his Head. 45 

so deserted by good fortune as to find himself, one 
day, at the instep of such a creature. 

Celeste G was poor, in humble life, and 

lovely as an ideal. But, at eighteen, she had no 
more heart than there was an anatomical necessity 
for. She was attracted by Mark — swayed by 
her glamour over him, rather than by his influence 
over her. Imperious, eighteen, and unchained. 
What could be hoped of her ? 

Rowland's family, rich and ever so many years 
old, (old enough to know better,) opposed the 
match with all that superfluous acrimony which 
characterizes a domestic quarrel. 

This, for Mark was human, increased his pas- 
sion. He only grew firm about the lips as Madam 
his mother protested. 

" This person Celeste," remarked Madam, loftily, 
" is common and poor." 

And poverty is the unpardonable sin from Dan 
to Beersheba. 

Matters went wretchedly. 

At length the contending forces agreed to an 



46 Out of his Head. 

armistice, and Howland, worn out by tears, con- 
sented to spend two years abroad, and then, at the 
expiration of that time, if his purpose remained 
unchanged and unchangeable, why, then, perhaps, 
it was more than hkely, etc. etc. — the antique 
story. 

The wilful w^ent abroad. He travelled through 
Italy, and wintered at Florence ; drifted on the 
Rhine, and summered at Schwalbach. The large, 
languishing eyes of his Andromache went with 
him. His thoughts were full of Celeste : he 
beheld her everywhere — in every saintly picture, 
in every faultless marble : every beautiful thing in 
nature and art was an inferior type of Celeste. 

When the two years had elapsed, he returned 
home, brown and handsome, wondering, on the 
passage, why she had written him only two letters 
in twice as many months. 

Now, one cannot get up one's trousseau, and 
write letters, at the same time. A week before 
his arrival, Celeste was married. 

"This person Celeste," said Madam, mighty 
drily, " has stepped out I " 



Out of his Head. il 

She had, indeed. 

When Howland received the neAvs, he bit his 
mustache, and looked steadily at nothing for 
twenty minutes. Then he threw a string of cameos 
into the grate, whistling an air from B Giuramento. 

As a piece of music, it was a failure. 

He was cut to the heart. 

For Celeste to wed an opera-singer. Basta ! 

He smoked uncounted segars that day, and 
came out of the clouds a different man. His 
chateau had toppled over in one niglit, and there 
was not an atom among the ruins worth picking 
up the next morning. In the rush and bubble of 
city life, he sought to wring out the remembrance 
of his wrono;. 

But grief is one of the quiet colors that wash. 

At this time my health became impaired, and 
an immediate visit to some milder cHmate, was the 
only specific. In an evil hour, I urged Howland 
!■) accompany me to New Orleans. 

We hired a small, furnished cottage, In a retired 
faubourg of the city, and set up our dii penates ; 



48 Out of Ms Head. 

the household consisting of Cip, a negro gardener ; 
Christina, a pretty quadroon girl, who kept our 
manage as tidy as a snow-drift ; and Agnes, 
Christina's child. 

With the new surroundings, Howland for 
aAvhile left the past to bury its dead. But by 
dem'ees his former restlessness returned. Time 
pressed on him like lead. He grew haggard and 
careworn, and a dim scar, which he never liked 
spoken of, brightened on his lip ; he played wildly, 
got into debt, and was going to the bad by a 
through- train. 

Of course my remonstrances were thrown 
away. What is the use of advising a man who 
is tired to death ? 

In the meanwhile, my own life passed tran- 
quilly enough, with the reading of books on metal- 
lurgy, and the drawing of plans for a more system- 
atic construction of the Moon-Apparatus, which, 
I regret to say, had been all but demolished by 
the accident related. 



Out of liis Head. 



49 



CHAPTER VII. 



:^^ 



An Arrival. 

HE fire of my segar glowed in 
the dusk like a panther's eye. I 
sat in the verandah of our cottage- 
house in Rue de smoking a 

) Manilla cheroot, and yielding my- 
self up to the influences of one of 
those southern nights which make 
a man forget that he must die. 
The stars were heavy and lustrous, and the 
clouds sailed through the sky, mere thistle-down. 
Every stir of air brought me the odors of orange- 
blossoms, and wafted the snaky smoke of my 
cheroot among the honeysuckle vines, which 
clambered erratically over the portico, shutting me 
out fi'om the dense moonlight. 




50 Out of liis Head. 

Three stone steps led from the porch into the 
garden, where a marble Naiad filled a cup of 
lapis lazuli from a slender urn of antique design. 
The jets of water, breaking on the rim of the 
goblet, and dripping down in shattered crystals on 
the gold-fish in the bowl of the fountain, made 
drowsy music. It Avas like the uneasy bubbling 
of a narghille. 

A sly, Avhite pelican waded in the dank grass, 
and would have liked to split a gold-fish with its 
long bill. 

What a fairy garden it was, with its shelly walks 
leading to nowhere in particular ; its dwarfish 
fig-trees with their pointed leaves ; its beds of 
mignonette ; its house-pots of fragrant jonquelles 
and camelias ; its one heavy magnolia, growing 
ulone like Pere Antoine's date-palm ; and the 
picket of mulberries, just within the lattice-fence, 
marking the boundaries of our demesne. 

It was not an extensive sweep of land, but the 
moonlight created interminable vistas, and de- 
stroyed one's idea of distance. It appeared as if 



Out of his Head. 51 

the whole earth were a tropical forest, stretchiMg 
out from our door-step. 

The only sounds that broke, or, rather, mingled 
with my reverie, were the gurglings of the foun- 
tain, the sleepy rustling of the leaves, and the 
inarticulate music of women's voices, blown to me 
from neighboring balconies. 

The inhabitants of this arid land dwell out of 
doors after sundown. As you stroll through the 
streets, in the twilight, you see groups, assembled 
on the piazzas of the low-roofed French houses, or 
sauntering unceremoniously in front gardens ; and 
many a Creole brunette and many a rich southern 
blonde, bends tender eyes on you as you pass. 
You catch glimpses of charming domestic'tableaux 

— Old Age in his arm-chair on the porch, and 
Youth and Beauty (with cherry-colored ribbons,) 
making love under the rose. I think life is an 
easy sort of inconvenience in warm latitudes. 

The fountain gurgled, the leaves whispered, and 
my cheroot went out, a single spark flymg upward 

— the soul of St. Nicotine I I sat \vatcliin£<; u 



h% Out of his Head. 

lithe chameleon that undulated out of the dark, 
and clad itself in a suit of moonlight on the stone 
step. There it lay, moist, glimmering, dead with 
ecstacy. Whether it was the torpor of the animal 
that extended itself to me, or the effect of the 
opium, sometimes wrapt ,in cheroots, I am not 
able to state ; but without warning, a drowsiness 
directly overpowered my senses. I slept, and 
dreamed. 

I scarcely know how to tell the dream which 
came to me — if it were a dream. 

An uimatural stillness fell upon the world ; 
the liquid music of the fountain fainted in the 
distance ; the leaves drooped in the sultry, motion- 
less air, like velvet. The atmosphere became 
strangely oppressive, and the aromas from the pot- 
plants grew so penetrating that it was almost pain 
to inhale them. 

Rising from my seat, I walked with difficulty to 
the open end of the verandah. The sky presented 
a startling appearance. 

The clouds were opaque and stagnant, the stars 



Out of his Head. 53 

shrivelled with waning fires, and a sickly, saffron 
tinge around the edge of the moon, made it look 
as if it had commenced to decay. 

I felt that these phenomena were not the pre- 
lude to one of those tornadoes which frequently 
burst upon the breathless quiet of tropical regions ; 
for there was no electricity in the close air, no 
muttering of the elements ; but a deep, brooding 
silence, infinitely more appalling than any tumult. 

A vage apprehension of some awful calamity 
took possession of me. I shuddered at being 
alone. 

The odors grew heavier and heavier, orange, 
heliotrope, magnolia — subtle and noxious, they 
were, like the exhalations from the poisoned 
flowers in Rappaccini's garden. I was faint with 
them. 

Suddenly the street-gate swung to with a clang. 
I heard footfalls on the gravelled walks. Thank 
heaven ! some one was coming to me. 

Cip stumbled up the steps. He saw me, and 
paused, resting against the balustrade, his hat 
filouched over his face. I called to him. 



54 Out of [\k Head. 

" Tell me, Cip, do you see that dreadful sky, or 
am I still dreaming ? " 

The negro did not lift his head, but said, 
huskily, 

" Marster, it has come, It has come ! " 

" What has come ? " 

" Lord, look down an' help us," murmured 
the negro solemnly. 

" Why don't you answer me ! Where is Mr. 
Howland ? Who has come ? WJiat has come ? " 

"Tlie — the — " 

" The — what ? " 

" The Chol'ra, marster ! " 



Out of ills Head. 



55 



CHAPTER VIII. 



Dark Days. 



*^/^2^£^^ HE cholera was upon us ; but 
not without warning. Year after 
year it had pursued its lonely 
march through woodland and 
desert, as noiseless and implacable 
as Fate, For months and months, 
rumor had heralded its fell ap- 
proach. Now it stole Avith the 
auras of morning into a populous town ; now it 
glided with the shades of nightfall into some 
happy village. 

Graves sprung up ui its wake, like thistles. 
The lank Arab, munching his few dates in the 
desert, looked up from the scanty meal, and 




56 Oul of his Head. 

beheld those basilisk eyes. His camel wandered 
off without a master. 

The be-nighted traveller by the Ganges, sunk 
exhausted on the banks of the muddy river ; but 
the bea>ts of the jungle did not growl over him, 
for even the nameless birds flew, shrieking, away. 

The English mother s;it by the hamlet-door, 
singing to her babe. The tiny hand clutched at 
the air, and the soft white evelids were rino-'ed 
with violet. 

]?cauty saw a baleful visage in her mirror. Xo 
rouge, nor pearl-powder nor balm could make it 
comely again. 

The miser hugged and kissed his money-bags ; 
but where he went he could not take his idols. 

Then Dives died in his palace, and the leper at 
the groined gate-way. 

The fingers of lovers were unknitted. 

The Cholera, the Scourge I 

In a single night the Afreet spread his wings 
over the doomed citv. A woman had been 



Ont of his Head. SI 

stricken down while buying a bunch of flowers in 
St. Mary's Market. An unknown man fell head- 
long from his horse on the levee. Six persons lay 
at the point of death in a cafe on Rue de Baronne. 
The hospitals were already filling up ; and the red 
flag wilted in the languid breeze at the quarantine. 
The streets were strewn with lime, and every pre- 
caution taken by the authorities to extirpate the 
plague. And then commenced that long proces- 
sion of funerals which never ceased to trail by our 
door for so many weary months. It is a question 
in my mind, though, whether the cholera is con- 
tagious. 

How hot, and dull, and dead the days were ! 

The roofs of the houses lay festering in the 

canescent heat ; the flowers drooped, and died 

cankei-ous deaths ; the outer leaves of the foliage 

changed to a li\-id oreen hue, and the timid grass 

crept up, and withered, in the interstices of the 

sidewalk. All dav a tawnv gold mist hung over 

the place. At night, the dews fell, and from 
8* 



58 Out of Ms Head. 

cypress swamps, on the skirts of the city, rose 
deadly miasma. 

No joyous children played at the door-step in 
the twilight. The guttural voice of the strolling 
marchand was no longer heard crying his creams 
and comfits. The small fruit-booths along the 
street were tenantless. The St. Charles Theatre 
and The Varieties were closed — only the tragedy 
of death drew crowded houses. The glittering 
bar-rooms, with their fancy glasses, and mirrors, 
and snowy drinks, were almost deserted. Even 
rondo, roulette, faro, monte and lansquenet, lost 
their fascination. Mass was said morning and 
evening in the old cathedral at Place (T Amies ; 
and many of the churches, catholic and protestant, 
were open throughout the day. 

The wheel of social life was broken. 

As to Howland and myself, we were not panic- 
stricken. The fine edge of my fear of death had 
been blunted by a similar experience, at Cuba, 
dunng a yellow-fover season ; and Howland re- 



Out of liis Head. 50 

garded the workinc^s of chance with stoh'd in- 
difference. 

When the epidemic first broke out, he had 
proposed, for my sake onlj, a trip across Lake 
Ponchartrain, to Pass Christian, or Biloxi ; but 
I would not listen to him. In overrulino; How- 
land's suggestion, I was simply a puppet, moving 
in accordance with my wires. It was predestined 
we should remain and face the sorrows of that 
year. 

I am a fatalist, you see ; and have reason to 
be one. 

We changed our mode of living in no particu- 
lar ; but ate fruit, drank wine, (rank heresy,) 
walked, rode, and slept as usual. And even Cip, 
who had somewhat recovered from his first fright, 
would sit of an evening by the kitchen-door, and 
play plaiwtive negro melodies on his rickety violin. 

" Cip," I used to say, " this Asiatic cholera is 
a countryman of yours." 

" O Lord, marster ! " 

Still the work went on. People died and lay 



60 Out of his Head. 

for days unburied, in obscure garrets. Oftentimes 
one cart bore away an entire family — hurried 
them off. Lying in my bed, I have been kept 
awake by hearses rumbhng by — at midnight. 
What I write I saw, and was a part of. I would 
it were fiction. 

Near our house stood a large brick church, the 
Church of the Bleeding Heart, I think it was 
called. The exterior of the edifice was left in an 
elaborate state of unfinish, the costly interior 
decorations having, I suppose, exhausted the 
parochial funds. It was a habit of mine to pass 
an hour, every day, in wandering about the 
dimly-lighted aisles, or sitting by the altar and 
looking at a painting of the Crucifixion, which 
covered a Gothic window back of the dais. The 
sun, early in the forenoon, used to rest for five or 
ten minutes on the glass directly above the 
Savior's head, and, blending with the aureola 
which the artist had placed around the angelic 
brows, pi'oduced a striking effect. 



Out of his Head. 61 

The painting, and the soothing twilight of the 
spot, lifted me into holy atmospheres. Here I 
came and thought of life and the world — not 
this world, or this life ; but the Life and the 
World beyond. 

Out of ray visits to the church grew an incident 
which I cannot resist recording. A story within 
a story, says Goethe, is a flaw in art. But life is 
made up of episodes — a story within a story. 

One morning I was leaving the church when I 
heard somebody sound the keys of the organ in 
the loft. There is a rich, gloomy pathos about 
the instrument that always impresses me. I stood 
listening to the mellow, irregular notes, touched 
at random. Presently the musician lingered on 
an octave, as if to gather strength for a prolonged 
flight — then the splendid Wedding March of 
Mendelssohn broke along the aisles, and soared up 
to the shadowy dome. 

How magically those unseen fingers wrung the 
meaning of the great maestro from the inanimate 
keys ! with what power and delicacy of touch ! 



m Oirt of his Head. 

As I listened, the sacred candles were suddenly 
lighted, and in their lambent glare a thousand 
p'hosts crowded into the carven pews, thronged the 
'gallery ; the priest stood in the chancel ; and then 
the bridal pageant swept by, and then the grand 
music burst out beyond control, surging away 
amons the resonant arches in tumultuous waves 
of sound; and then — as if to render the illusion 
perfect — the clock in the belfry struck twelve. 

At the last stroke, the music ceased, the church 
was emptied of its ghostly audience, the scented 
candles flickered out, and I stood alone. I could 
have wept with an undefined, mj^sterious sorrow, 
— wept the loss of something I had never known, 
something that might have been ! 

Again the music rose, but more gently — a 
melody of Beethoven. It was left unfinished. 
The organ-lid closed abruptly ; I heard the fine 
click of the key turning in the wards, and haiten- 
ed to the vestibule of the church to catch a gl mpse 
of the musician. 

As I gained the door, a young girl, leading a 



Out of Ms Head. 63 

little boy by the hand, was slowly descending the 
broad oaken staircase. 

" Were you playing the organ, a moment 
since ? " I asked, doubtfully. 

" Yes." 

" Are you the organist here ? " 

" No, sir ; but my father was." 

" Was ? " 

" They took papa away last week," said the 
boy simply ; " and this is Clara Dujardine, my 
sister, who loves him." 

They passed on. 

Every morning for several weeks the child- 
musician came to the choir. It was not hard to 
understand why the poor girl lingered there, day 
after day, playing the same glorious music always 
— the music which the old organist had loved. 

Suddenly her visits ceased. 

The sunshine rested on the liead of the paintv.'d 
Christ, and lighted up the stained windows ; the 
dreary sexton, and, now and then, a priest or two, 
found their way into the sanctuary : but I waited 



64 Out of his Head. 

in vain for the girl with her spiritual eyes and 
fragile hands. 

In the ancient French burying-ground, is a 
b.umble mound which the delicate grass, I like to 
think, takes pleasures in making beautiful, before 
it touches the other graves. Spring-time had 
muffled it in flowers, the day I bent down and 
read the simple inscription : 

Clara Dujardine. 
Aged 17. 

Near the head-stone, with a Avreath of immortelles 
in his shut hand, sat the little boy — asleep. 

The sultry, dreadful days ; the huge city in its 
swoon-like silence ; the busy, busy death ! — how 
these things stay with my thought. Here, in 
pleasant New England, sometimes in the twilight, 
invisible fingers play for me the sad strains of 
Beethoven, the Wedding March of Mendelssohn. 



Out of his Head. 



65 



CHAPTER IX. 



Agnes. 




tin a. 



OR heaven's sake, Lynda," said 
Howland, one evening, " let us have 
our coffee aud segars on the back 
piazza. Human nature cannot stand 
ten funerals to one cup of Mocha." 

The hearses crawled by the house 
day and night, an interminable train. 

" Coffee on the back porch, Chris- 



As Christina placed our bamboo chairs on the 
verandah, I saw by her swollen eyelids that she 
had been weeping. 

"Christina? " said I, inquiringly. 

"Little Agnes, sir — I'm afraid she is very 
sick." 



(it) Out of his Head. 

Little Agnes ! Christina's child, the only 
flower that blossomed for one poor life — the little 
jn;le bloom of love that sprung up in the ci'eviee 
of a broken heart. 

I do not know Christina's history ; but I 
imagine it would not be impossible to guess. I 
think that a page of it was written on the face of 
the child. 

Agnes was fairer than her mother ; she had her 
motlier's willowy form, the same ductile voice ; 
but tlie light hair, thin li])s, and sensitive nostrils, 
were not of Christina's race. The passions of two 
alien natm'es were welded in that diminutive 
frame. 

Rowland and I had made a pet of the girl, foi 
she had a hundred pretty womanly ways, and a 
certain sadness older than herself — a sadness 
peculiar to such waifs. 

The sick child lay up stairs, in Christina's 
sleeping-room. One glance at the serene face 
assured us there was no hope : the radiance of 
another world was dawning on the forehead. 



Out of Ms Head. 67 

That night little Agnes passed away. I was 
sorry for Christina, but not for little Agnes ! 

Christina, in her bereavement, was not noisy 
and absurd, like women I have seen. Servitude 
had been a hundred years taming the blood in 
her veins. 

Her grief expressed itself in silent caresses. 
She sat by the bedside all day, dressing the child 
with flowers. Now she would lay a knot of 
pansies on the still heart, now she would sn^ooth 
one of the pitiful little hands — yearning, dying 
for some faint sign of recognition. Then she 
picked oiF the flowers, one by one, and rearranged 
them. Fondly combed the loner silk hair over 
her fingers, with a sad half-smile, and not a tear 
comforting her dry eyelids. There was pathos 
in that. 

" Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak, 
Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break." 

The carriage which was to convev the child to 
the cemetery, drew up at our door early in the 
afternoon. 



68 Out of Ms Head. 

When Christina heard the wheels grate on the 
curb-stone, her hp quivered, and she reached out 
her arms, as if she Avould fold the babe forever on 
the bosom where it could never nestle ao;ain. 

" Not yet, please — not quite yet ! " 

The sorrow and supplication of those words 
were not to be resisted. 

It was almost dark when Cip raised the light 
coffin in his arms, and bore it, with a sort of 
roucrh kindness, to the carriage. His violin was 
mute, that night, and many a night afterwards. 

As the gate shut to, Christina stood on the 
piazza, with that same sad half-smile on her lips. 

" Good-bye, little Agnes ! " she said, with 
touching tenderness. 

Then Christina went into the house, and closed 
the door softly. 



Out of ids Head. 



69 



CHAPTER X. 



The Red Domino. 




OWLAND and myself sat on the 
back seat, and Cip outside with the 
iVi driver. So we moved on. 

Saving an occasional hearse, 
intersecting our way, the streets 
were silent and deserted as usual. 
The tall houses, here and there 
looming up against the increasing 
twilio-ht, were like the ghosts of houses. The 
sweet human life in them had fled. Ev^erything 
was spectral and unreal, we most of all, with that 
slim black box on the front seat. A phantom 
carriage, dragged by phantom horses to a grave- 
yard ! 



70 Out of his Head. 

We left Agnes in the leafy French cemetery ; 
and, sending the negro home with the barouche, 
followed on leisurely, threading the narrow streets, 
arm in arm, as speechless as two statues. 

We were in what is termed the French part 
of the city, one of the lower municipalities — a 
district as distinct from the American precincts as 
Paris is. Here, in dangerous times, long ago, a 
few brave men laid the foundation of the great 
and miserable city. The houses, to all appear- 
ances, were built immediately after the Deluge ; 
and the streets, crowded with the odd-ends of 
architecture, branch off into each other in the 
most whimsical fashion. 

As we wheeled round the angle of one of these 
wrinkled thoroughfares, our ears were saluted by 
an exclamation of deep satisfaction, and a merry 
peal of girlish lavighter ; at the same instant wo 
found ourselves face to face with two persons whu 
were apparently costumed for a bal masque — 
one, with a certain uncoutli dignity, in the showy 
court-dress of the time of Louis Quatorze, and the 



Out of his Head. 71 

other, seemingly a young and pretty woman, 
dressed as a page. Tlie faces of both were con- 
cealed by semi-masks, a short fringed curtain 
shielding the lower features. 

A door at the right of us was thrown open, 
and a flood of light fell glitteringly on these two 
personages who occupied the confined sidewalk, 
and seemed disposed to dispute our passage.* 

Howland attempted to push by when the page 
laid her small gloved hand on his shoulder. 

" By your leave, messieurs," said the page, 
'' this is Louis XIV ! — is n't it, Charley ? " 

Tlie man nodded. 

" We were instructed by our queen," continued 
the mask, " to fill two vacant seats at her royal 
board. She gives a banquet to-night ; plates vreve 
set for twenty favorites of the ermine. Eighteen 
came, and two did n't — they neglected even to 

* This probably took place during that period of festivity 
which precedes Lent, it still being a custom, among the Franco- 
American population of New Orleans, to " keep the Carnival." — 

EuiTOR. 



n Out of his Head. 

send their regrets. Impolite in them — was n't 
it, Charley?" 

" Confoundedly," said the monarch, curtly. 

" But they had some slight excuse ; they were 
quite dead; and we forgive 'em, don't we, 
Charley ? " 

" We forgive 'em." 

" What does all this mummery mean ? " said 
Howland, impatiently. 

" There ! don't be cross. It means that we 
crave your presence at the feast. O, you mu.r,t 
come ! Or we'll have the whole regal household 
buzzing at your ears in a pair of seconds ! " 

While the girl spoke, a dozen maskers — man- 
darins, satyrs, and oiitlandish figures, — crowded 
the doorway, and seemed waiting only for the 
Avord to seize us bodily. There was no chance 
for retreat. 

*'Let us go with these jesters," said Howland, 
in a whisper, " since we cannot help ourselves 
without trouble. We are among the Romans. 
This is a new edition of the Decamcrone.'^ 



Out of Ms Head. 73 

" How fortunately Ave met you," cried the 
-irl. " Come ! " 

Her mask slipped aside, and for an instant I 
caught a profile view of a pretty, aquiline nose, 
one sunny eye, and a mouth like a moss-rose. 

" Now, Mollie," said the man, thrusting his 
arm through mine. The page took coquettish 
possession of HoxAland. 

We were conducted throught a bare, uncarpeted 
entry, at the end of which a green-baize door 
opened into a saloon. The masqueraders whom 
we had seen at the entrance, now seated them- 
selves at the table, Avhich extended nearly the 
entire length of the room. 

Our appearance on the threshold was greeted 
with a shout of laughter. 

A woman in a blood-red domino and scarlet 
satin mask, half rose from a fauteuil, as we 
entered, waved her hand to us graciously, and 
sunk back on the downy cushions Avith such un- 
assumed grace and majesty, that I involuntarily 



74 Out of Ills Head. 

removed ray hat. Howland bit liis lip, and made 

a low bow. 

" You are welcome, gentlemen," said the Red 

Domino. 

The voice was low, and sweet, and tremulous, 

like the sound of a harp-string, lightly touched. 
The page proceeded to introduce to us the 

motley people, half of whom were women, and all 

evidently citizens of Bohemia. 

" This," began the girl, with mock gravity, 

" is our light-o'-foot, Zephyr, eating caramels ; 

that dear creature, there, in blue, who is waiting 

for a chance to press Jacques' fingers under the 

table, is called Next-to-heaven, but she's only 

next to Jacques, v/hich is much the same thing. 
The young lady with wings, who looks as if she 

were going to fly away, and never does, is 
L'Amour. Dear me ! some of you have charac- 
ters, and some of you have n't. This is Rose 
Bonbon, and this. Madam la Marquise with the 
snowiest shoulder in Louisiana. You should see 
them with their masks off — and be unhappy ! " 



Out of Ms Head. 75 

" This," proceeded the speaker, turning to a 
slim harlequin, who resembled the small blade of 
a penknife, " is a sentimental gentleman who 
writes verses to eyebrows — he makes six copies 
of each sonetto, and so kills half a dozen birds 
with one stone. This is Robert le — what's-his 
name. This is Hamlet, you know him by his 
inky cloak : this is Petruchio, the woman-tamer 
tamed by a woman, (Mrs. P. lectures him ! ) and 
here is Friar Lawrence, who will confess you for 
a picayune, provided, always, you are young, 
handsome, and feminine — but you must be the 
last, he's so pious ! " 

" And you," said Rowland, smiling in spite qf 
himself, " you are — " 

" Nobody in particular, very much at your 
service ! " 

And the girl walked archly away on the points 
of her toes, like a ballet-dancer. 

While this outrd introduction was being con- 
cluded, I glanced around the salon. A globed 
lamp, suspended by a silver chain, hung like a 



76 Out of his Head. 

full moon over the centre of the table. Project- 
ing from the frescoed walls on either side were 
Chinese lanterns, covered vs^ith flat landscapes and 
hieroglyphics. Ancient, mediaeval and modern 
furniture was piled about the room in grotesque 
confusion. It was like an antiquary's collection. 
No two pieces matching. One window was hung 
with blue brocade, alive with an Etruscan vine- 
work of gold thread ; a second, unpleasantly green 
with a Venitian blind. The floor was muffled in 
a Turkish carpet, wrought so naturally with 
azaleas and ipomeas, that their perfumes seemed 
to fill the chamber. 
,But the lounges, the drapery, and the inlaid 
chairs, as I looked at them more closely, proved 
to be only clever imitations of the real thing — 
the painttd and gilded paraphernalia of the stage. 
This room, I have since thought, was probably 
the green-room of the Italian Opera House, fitted 
up for the occasion, from " the properties." 

We took our places at the table, and tlie wine 
went round ; jests flew from lip to lip, like 



Out of his Heml. 77 

mockino;-birds, and " short svvallow-flia'hts of 
song " from the moutlis of mysterious women ; 
while a band of unseen musicians, somewhere 
behind a screen, now and then broke into a 
dehrious waltz. 

All this was so bizarre, so like an ingenious 
dream, that I expected every moment to wake up, 
and find myself sitting on our verandah, at home, 
a burnt-out segar at my feet, and the fountain 
laughing in the garden. 

Howland alone was silent and distrait, emptying 
glass after glass with the mechanical air of an 
automaton. 

Opposite him sat a bleak, attenuated man clad 
in black silk tights, the breast and hips of which 
were trimmed with strips of white cloth, in painful 
imitation of a skeleton. His hands were long and 
bony, and needed no artifice to make them seem 
as if they belonged to the pasteboard death's-head 
that screened his features. 

After some minutes, I became aware that this 
singular person regulated his motions by those of 



78 Out of his Head. 

Howland, resting his head on one hand, and 
draining his glass at the same time Mark drank. 
I wondered if Rowland noticed him. 

" A toast I " cried the Harlequin, springing up 
in his chair, and resting one parti-colored foot on 
the edge of the table. 

We all stood, excepting the Red Domino, with 
fresh glasses. I did not hear what the toast was, 
for clink! went a glass; and the sharp splinters 
sparkled on the cloth. 

" The queen has dropt her goblet,'" said Rose 
Bonbon. 

" Then she must sin^ us a sonfj: to take the 
sound out of our ears," cried the Friar. 

" A penalty, a penalty ! " 

" A song ! " shrieked a dozen voices. 

The Red Domino rose slowly from tlie fauteuil, 
and the voice which I had longed to hear again, 
issued tremulously from beneath the chin-curtain 
of the mask. I watched her eyes as she sang : 

" Dall' imo del mio core 
Soree irna sol preoe. 



Out of Ms Head. 79 

Che 1' idol mio ammiri, 
Che io r ammiri, e muoia." 

Here the skeleton-man leaned heavily agahist 
the table, and Howland smiled — but such a bitter 
smile. He had won the drinking match ! 

Two maskers carried the mime, who had merely 
faiiiied, to an adjoining room. 

" That was the cantatriee's husband," said the 
Blue Lady to me, in a whisper, 

" Her husband ? Good heavens ! see how 
coolly she takes it ! " 

" Yes.- La Reine does n't worship him." 

"No?" 

" The Cholera," said the Harlequin. 

" The dark Death," said Hamlet, " ' a little 
more than kin and less than kind ! ' " 

" The song, give us the song ! " cried a man, 
covered from head to feet with spangles, looking 
as if he had just been dipt into a bath of quick- 
silver. 

" The song, the song ! " shi-ieked the voices. 

The Red Domino had not changed her position 



80 Out of his Head. 

during this scene, but stood there like a statue 
carved out of a boulder of red chalk-stone. 

Howland, with his face deathly pale, bent 
forward to listen. 

Attain that sweet voice, lower and more tremu- 
Ions tlian before, stole into the air. 

It was not fancy this time, her eyes burned 
tlirough the mask at Mark : 

" Alfin, com' alma peccatrice, 
Alle porte del ciel io giungo, 
Noti per entrar cogli olctti, 
Oh ! giammai . . , . soltanto per morir." 

Howland rose wildly from his chair, and stagger- 
ing toward the Red Domino, sunk down at her feet. 

" I am dying," said Howland, " but I know 
that voice ! My heart is breaking with it I " 

With an air of love and remorse, she stooped 
over Mark, and folded him in her arras. 

" Your face ! " said Howland. *' Your face, 
quick ! Let me look on your face ! " 

Then Celeste tore off the mask and rested her 
head on his bosom. Then she sobbed and 
moaned — the soul thai was within her. 



Out of his Head. 81 

So she comes to me out of the gray mists and 
shadows of the Past — the woman who found her 
heart when it was somewhat late. 

This was years ago. But every Mardi Gras, it 
is said, a sorrowful queenly lady, robed from foot 
to forehead in deep crimson, glides in among the 
gayer maskers, and whenever she appears, the 
laugh dies on the lip. 



4* 



82 



Oat of ills Head. 



CHAPTER XL 



The Danseuse. 



,/>^^t9 



HE ensuing summer I returned 
North depressed by the result of 
my sojourn in New Orleans. It 
was only by devoting myself, body 
)and soul, to some intricate pursuit 
that I could dispel the gloom which 
threatened to seriously affect my 
health. 

The Moon-Apparatus was insufficient to dis- 
tract me. I turned my attention to mechanism, 
and was successful in producing several wonderful 
pieces of work, among which may be mentioned 
a brass butterfly, made to flit so naturally in the 
air as to deceive the most acute observers. The 




Oiit of liis Head. 83 

motion of the toy, the soft down and gorgeous 
damask-stains on the pinions, were declared quite 
perfect. The thing is rusty and wont work now ; 
1 tried to set it going for Dr. Pendegrast, the 
other day. 

A manikin musician, playing a few exquisite 
airs on a miniature piano, likewise excited much 
admiration. This fig-ure bore such an absurd, 
unintentional resemblance to a gentleman who 
has since distinguished himself as a pianist, that 
1 presented the trifle to a lady admirer of 
Gottschalk. 

T also became a taxidermist, and stuffed a pet 
bird with springs and diminutive flutes, causing it 
to hop and carol, in its cage, with great glee. 
But my master-piece was a nimbi?' wliit-e mouse, 
with pink eyes, that could scamper up the walls, 
and masticate bits of cheese in an extraordi- 
nary style. My chamber-maid shrieked, and 
jumped up on a chair, whenever I let the little 
fellow loose in her presence. One day, unhappily, 
the mouse, while nosing around after its favorite 



84 Out of his Head. 

aliment, got snapt in a rat-trap that yawned in 
the closet, and I Avas never able to readjust the 
machinery. 

Engaged in these useful inventions, — useful, 
because no exercise of the human mind is ever in 
vain, — my existence for two or three years was 
so placid and uneventful, I began to hope that the 
shadows which had followed on my path from 
childhood, making me unlike other men, had 
returned to that unknown world where they 
properly belong ; but the Fates were only taking 
breath to work out more surely the problem of my 
destiny. I must keep nothing back. I must 
extenuate nothing. 

I am about to lift the vail of mystery which, 
for nearly seven years, has shrouded the story of 
Mary Ware ; and though I lay bare my own 
weakness, or folly, or what you will, I do not 
shrink from the unvailing. 

No hand but mine can now perform the task. 
There was, indeed, a man who might have done 



Out of Ms Head. 85 

this better than I. But he went his way ir. 
silence. I Kke a man who can hold his tongue. 

On the corner of Clarke and Crandall streets, 
in New York, stands a dingy brown frame-house. 
It is a very old house, as its obsolete style of 
structure would tell you. It has a morose, un- 
happy look, though once it must have been a 
blythe mansion. I think that houses, like human 
beings, ultimately become dejected or cheerful, 
according to their experience. The very air of 
some front-doors tells their history. 

This house, I repeat, has a morose, unhappy 
look, at present, and is tenanted by an incalculable 
number of Irish families, while a picturesque 
junk-shop is in full blast in the basement ; but at 
the time of which I write, it was a second-rate 
boarding-place, of the more respectable sort, and 
rather largely patronized by poor, but honest, 
literary men, tragic-actors, members of the chorus, 
and such like gilt people. 

My apartments on Crandall street, were oppo- 
site this building, to which my attention wa 



86 Out of his Head. 

directed soon after taking possession of the rooms, 
by the discovery of the following facts : 

First, that a charming lady lodged on the 
second-floor front, and sang like a canary every 
morning. 

Second, that her name was Mary Ware. 

Third, that Mary Ware was a danseuse, and 
had two lovers — only two. 

Fourth, that Mary Ware and the page, who, 
years before, had drawn Howland and myself into 
that fatal masquerade, were the same person. 

This last discovery moved me strangely, aside 
from the fact that her presence opened an old 
wound. The power which guides all the actions 
of my life constrained me to watch this woman. 

Mary Ware was the leading-lady at The 
Olympic. Night after night found me in the 
parquette. I can think of nothing with which to 
compare the airiness and utter abandon of her 
dancing. She seemed a part of the music. She 
was one of beauty's best thoughts, then. Her 
glossy gold hair reached down to her waist, 



Out of his Head. 87 

shading one of those mobile faces which remind 
you of Guido's picture of Beatrix Cenci — 
there was something so fresh and enchanting in 
the mouth. Her luminous, almond eyes, looking 
out winningly from under their drooping fringes, 
were at once the delight and misery of young men. 

Ah ! you w^ere distracting in your nights of 
triumph, when the bouquets nestled about your 
elastic ankles, and the kissing of your castanets 
made the pulses leap ; but I remember when you 
Jay on your cheerless bed, in the blank daylight, 
with the glory faded from your brow, and '• none 
so poor as to do you reverence," 

Then I stooped down and kissed you — but 
not till then. 

Mary Ware was to me a finer study than her 
lovers. She had two, as I have said. One of 
them was commonplace enough — well-made, well- 
dressed, shallow^, flaccid. Nature, when she gets 
out of patience with her best works, throws off 
such things by the gross, instead of swearing. 



88 Out of his Head. 

He was a lieutenant, in the navy I tliink. The 
gilt button has charms to soothe the savao-e breast. 

The other was a man of different mould, and 
interested me in a manner for which I could not 
then account. The first time I saw him did not 
seem like the first time. But this, perhaps, is an 
after-impression . 

Every line of his countenance denoted char- 
acter; a certain capability, I mean, but whether 
for good or evil was not so plain. I should have 
called him handsome, but for a noticeable scar 
which ran at right angles across his mouth, ffivino- 
him a sardonic expression when he smiled. 

His frame might have set an anatomist wild 
with delight — six feet two, deep-chested, knitted 
with tendons of steel. Not at all a fellow to 
amble on plush carpets. 

" Some day," thought I, as I saw him stride 
by the house, " he will throw the little Lieutenant 
out of that second-stoiy window." 

I cannot tell, to this hour, which of those two 
men Mary Ware loved most — for I think s!ie 



Out of his Head. 89 

loved them both. A woman's heart was the 
hisolvable charade with which the Sphinx nipt 
the Egyptians. I was never good at puzzles. 

The flirtation, however, was food enough for 
the whole neighborhood. But faintly did the 
gossips dream of the strange drama that was 
being shaped out, as compactly as a tragedy of 
Sophocles, under their noses. 

They were very industrious in tearing Mary 
Ware's good name to pieces. Some laughed at 
the gay Lieutenant, and some at Julius Kenneth ; 
but they all amiably united in condemning Mary 
\\ are. 

This, possibly, was strictly proper, for Mary 
Ware was a woman : the woman is always ' to 
blame in such cases ; the man is hereditarily and 
constitutionally in the right ; the woman is born in 
the wrong. That is the. world's verdict, that is what 
Justice says ; but we should weigh the opinion of 
Justice with care, since she is represented, by 
poets and sculptors, not satirically, I trust, as a 
blind Woman. 



90 Out of liis Head. 



I 



It was so from the befiinnincr. Was not tbe 
first lady of tlie world the cause of all our woe "^ 
I feel safe in leavhig it to a jury of gentle dames. 
But from all such judges, had I a sister on trial 
good Lord deliver her. 

This state of affixirs had continued for five or 
six months, when it was reported that Julius 
Kenneth and Mary Ware were affianced. The 
Lieutenant was less frequently seen in Crandall 
street, and Julius waited upon Aliry's footsteps 
with the fidelity of a shadow. 

Mrs. Grundy was somewhat appeased. 

Yet — though Mary went to the Sunday con- 
certs with Julius Kenneth, she still wore the 
Lieutenant's roses in her bosom. 

Mrs. Grundy said that. 



Out of his Head. 



91 



CHAPTER XII. 



A Mystery. 




NE drizzly November morning — 
how well I remember it ! — I was 
awakened by a series of nervous 
raps on my bed-room door. The 
noise startled me from an un- 
pleasant dream. 

" O, sir ! " cried the chamber- 
maid on the landing, " There's 
been a dreadful time across the street. They 've 
gone and killed Mary Ware ! " 
" Ah ! " 

That was all I could say. Cold drops of 
perspiration stood on my forehead. 

looked at my watch ; it was eleven o'clock ; 



m Out of liis Head. 

I had over-slept myself, having sat up late the 
previous night. 

I dressed hastily, and, without waiting for 
breakfast, pushed my way through the murky 
crowd that had collected in front of the house 
opposite, and passed up stairs, unquestioned. 

When I entered the room, there were six people 
present : a thick-set gentleman, in black, with a 
bland professional air, a physician ; two policemen ; 
Adelaide Woods, an actress ; Mrs. Marston, the 
landlady ; and Julius Kenneth. 

In the centre of the chamber, on the bed, lay 
the body of Mary Ware — as pale as Seneca's 
wife. 

I shall never forget it. The corse haunted me 
for years afterwards, the dark streaks under the 
eyes, and the wavy hair streaming over the 
pillow — the dead gold hair. I stood by Iier for 

moment, and turned down the counterpane, 
which was drawn ud closely to the chin. 

" There was that across her throat 
Which you had hardly cared to see." 



Out of Ills Head. m 

At the head of the bed sat Julius Kennetli, 
bending over the icy hand which he held in his 
own. He was kissino; it. 

The gentleman in black was conversing in 
undertones with Mrs. Marston, who every now 
and then glanced furtively toward Mary Ware. 

The two policemen were examining the doors, 
closets and windows of the apartment with, 
obviously, little success. 

There was no fire in the air-tight stove, but the 
place was suffocatingly close. I opened a window, 
and leaned against the casement to o;et a breath 
of fsesh air. 

The physician approached me. I muttered 
something to him indistinctly, for I was partly 
sick with the peculiar mouldy smell that pervaded 
the room. 

" Yes," he began, scrutinizing me, " the affair 
looks very perplexing, as you remark. Profes- 
sional man, sir ? No ? Bless me ! — beg pardon. 
Never in my life saw anything that looked so 
exceedingly like nothing. Thought, at first, 'twas 



94 Out of liis Head. 

a clear case of suicide — door locked, key on the 
inside, place undisturbed ; but then we find no 
instrument with which the subject could have 
inflicted that wound on the neck. Queer. Party- 
must have escaped up chimney. But how ^ 
Don't know. The windows are at least thirty 
feet from the ground. It would be impossible for 
a person to jump that far, even if he could clear 
the iron railing below. Which he could'nt. 
Disagreeable things to jump on, those spikes, sir. 
Must have been done with a sharp knife. Queer, 
very. Party meant to make sure work of it. 
The carotid neatly severed, upon my word." 

The medical gentleman went on in this monolo- 
guic style for fifteen minutes, during which time 
Kenneth did not raise his lips from Mai'y's fino-ers. 

Approaching the bed, I spoke to him ; but he 
onl}^ shook his head in reply. 

I understood his grief. 

After regaining mj' chamber, I sat listlessly foi 
three or four hours, gazing into the grate. The 
twilight flitted in from the street ; but I did not 



Out of his Head. 95 

heed it. A face among the coals fascinated me. 
It came and went and came. Now I saw a cavern 
hung with lurid stalactites ; now a small Vesuvius 
vomiting smoke and flame ; now a bridge spanning 
some tartarean gulf; then these crumbled, each 
in its turn, and from ovit the heated fragments 
peered the one inevitable face. 

The Evening Mirror, of that day, gave the 
following detailed report of the inquest : 

" This morning, at eight o'clock, Mary Ware, 
the celebrated danseuse, was found dead in her 
chamber, at her late residence on the corner of 
Clarke and Crandall streets. The perfect order 
of the room, and the fact that the door Avas locked 
on the inside, have induced many to believe that 
the poor girl was the victim of her own rashness. 
But we cannot think so. That the door was 
fii^rriied on the inner side, proves notliing except, 
indeed, that the murderer was hidden in the 
apartment. ' That the room gave no evidence of a 
struggle having taken place, is also an insignificant 



96 Out of his Head. 

point. Two men, or even one, grappling suddenly 
with the deceased, wno was a slight woman, would 
have prevented any great resistance. The de- 
ceased was dressed in a ballet-costume, and was, 
as we conjecture, murdered directly after her 
return from the theatre. On a chair near the 
bed, lay several fresh bouquets, and a water-proof 
cloak which she was in the habit of wearmg over 
her dancing-dress, on coming home from the 
theatre at night. No weapon whatever was found 
on the premises. We give below all the material 
testimony elicited by the coroner. It explains 
little. 

" Josephine Marston deposes : I keep a board- 
ing house at No. 131 Crandall street. Miss Ware 
has boarded with me for the past two years. Has 
always borne a good character as far as I know. 
I do not think she had many visitors ; certainly no 
male visitors, excepting a Lieutenant King, and 
Mr. Kenneth to whom she was encraged. I do 
not know when King was last at the house ; not 
within three days, I am confident. Deceased told 



Out of liis Head. 97 

me that he had gone away. I did not see her 
last night when she came home. The hall-door is 
never locked ; each of the boarders has a latch- 
key. The last time I saw Miss Ware was just 
before she went to the theatre, when she asked me 
to call her at eight o'clock (this morning) as she 
had promised to walk with ' Jules,' meaning Mr. 
Kenneth. I knocked at the door nine or ten 
times, but received no answer. Then I grew 
frightened and called one of the lady boarders, 
Miss Woods, who helped me to force the lock. 
I The key fell on the floor inside as we pushed 
against the door. Mary Ware was lying on the 
bed, dressed. Some matches were scattered under 
the gas-burner by the bureau. The room pre- 
sented the same appearance it does noM^. 

" Adelaide Woods deposes : I am an actress by 
profession. I occupy the room next to that of the 
deceased. Have known her twelve months. It 
was half-past eleven when she came home ; she 
stopped in my chamber for perhaps three-quarters 
of an hour. The call-boy of The Olympic usually 



98 Out of his Head. 

accompanies her home from the theatre when she 
is alone. I let her in. Deceased had misplaced 
her night-key. The partition between our rooms 
is of brick ; but I do not sleep soundly, and should 
have heard any unusual noise. Two weeks ago, 
Miss Ware told me she was to be married to Mr. 
Kenneth in January next. The last time I saw 
them together was the day before yesterday. I 
assisted Mrs Marston in breaking open the door. 
[Describes the position of the body, etc., etc.] 

" Here the call-boy was summoned, and testified 
to accompanying the deceased home the night 
before. He came as far as the steps with hei*. 
The door was opened by a woman ; could not 
swear it was Miss Woods, though he knoAvs her 
by sight. The night was dark, and there was no 
lamp burning in the entry. 

•' Julius Kenneth deposes : I am a master- 
machinist. Reside at No. — Forsythe street. 
Miss Ware was my cousin. We were engaged 
to be married next — [Here the witness' voice 
failed him.] The last time I saw her was on 



Out of his Head. 99 

Wednesday morning, on which occasion we walked 
out together. I did not leave my room last 
evening : Avas confined by a severe cold. A 
Lieutenant King used to visit my cousin fre- 
quently ; it created considerable talk in the 
neighborhood : I did not like it, and requested 
her to break the acquaintance. She informed me, 
Wednesday, that King had been ordered to some 
foreign station, and would trouble me no more 
Was excited at the time, hinted at beinn- tired of 
living ; then laughed, and was gayer than she had 
been for weeks. Deceased was subject to fits of 
depression. She had engaged to walk with me 
this Biornino; at eio-ht. When I reached Clark 
street I learned that she — [Here the witness, 
overcome by emotion, was allowed to retire.] 

" Dr. Wren deposes : [This gentleman was 
very learned and voluble, and had to be sup- 
pressed several times by the coroner. We furnish 
a brief synopsis of his testimony.] I was called 
in to view the body of the deceased. A deep 
incision on the throat, two inches below the left 



100 Out of his Head. 

ear, severing the left common carotid and the 
internal jugular vein, had been inflicted with some 
sharp instrument. Such a wound would, in my 
opinion, produce death almost instantaneously. 
The body bore no otlier signs of violence. A slight 
mark, almost indistinguishable, in fact, extended 
from the upper lip toward the right nostril — 
some hurt, I suppose, received in infancy. De- 
ceased must have been dead a number of hours, 
the rigor mortis having already supervened, 
etc., etc. 

" Dr. Ceccarini corroborated the above testi- 
mony. 

" The night-watchman and seven other persons 
were then placed on the stand; but their state- 
ments threw no fresh light on the case. 

" The situation of Julius Kenneth, the lover of 
the ill-fated girl, draws forth the deepest com- 
miseration. Miss Ware was twenty-four years 
of age. 

" Who the criminal is, and what could have 
led to the perpetration of the cruel act, are ques- 



Ont of Ms Head. 101 

tions which, at present, threaten to "baffle the 
sagacity of the poHce. If such deeds can be 
committed with impunity in a crowded city, Hke 
this, who is safe from the assassin's steel? " 



m 



Out of his Head. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



Thou art the Man. 




COULD hut smile on reading all 
this serious nonsense. 

After breakfast, the next morn- 
ing, I made my toilet with extreme 
care, and presented myself at the 
sheriff's office. 

Two gentlemen who were sitting 
at a table, busy with papers, started 
nervously to their feet, as I announced myself. I 
bowed very calmly to the sheriff, and said, 

" / am the person ivho murdered Mary Ware ! " 

Of course I was instantly arrested ; and that 

evening, in jail, I had the equivocal pleasure of 

reading these paragraphs among the police items 

of the Mirror: 



Out of his Head. 103 

" The individual who murdered the ballet-girl, 
in the night of the third inst., in a house on 
Crandall street, surrendered himself to the sheriff 
this forenoon. 

" He gave his name as Paul Lynde, and resides 
opposite the place where the tragedy was enacted. 
He is a man of medium stature, has restless gray 
eyes, chestnust hair, and a supernaturally pale 
countenance. He seems a person of excellent 
address, is said to be wealthy, and nearly con- 
nected with an influential New England family. 
Notwithstanding his gentlemanly manner, there is 
that about him which would lead one to select him 
fi'om out a thousand, as a man of cool and despe- 
rate character. 

" Mr. Lynde's voluntary surrender is not the 
least astonishing feature of this affair ; for, had he 
preserved silence he would, beyond a doubt, have 
escaped even suspicion. The murder was planned 
and executed with such deliberate skill, that there 
is little or no evidence to complicate him. In 
truth, there is no evidence against him, excepting 



104 Out of his Head. 

his own confession, which is meagre and confusing 
enough. He freely acknowledges the crime, but 
stubbornly refuses to enter into any details. He 
expresses a desire to be hanged immediately ! ! 

" How Mr. Lynde entered the chamber, and 
by what means he left it, after committing the 
deed, and why he cruelly killed a lady with 
whom he had had (as we gather from the testi- 
mony,) no previous acquaintance, — are enigmas 
which still perplex the public mind, and will not 
let curiosity sleep. These facts, however, will 
probably be brought to light during the impending 
trial. In the meantime, we await the denouement 
with interest." 



Out of ids Head. 



105 



CHAPTER XIV. 



Paul's Confession. 




N the afternoon following this 
disclosure, the door of my cell 
ffturned on its hinges, and Julius 
Kenneth entered. 

In his presence I ought to have 
trembled ; but I was calm and 
collected. He, feverish and dan- 
gerous. 
" You received my note ? " 
" Yes ; and .have come here, as you requested." 
I waved him to a chair, which he refused to 
take. Stood leaning on the back of it. 

" You of course know, Mr. Kenneth, that I 

have refused to reveal the circumstances connected 
5* 



106 Out of his Head. 

with the deatli of Mary Ware ? I wished to 
make the confession to you alone." 

He regarded me for a moment from beneath his 
shaggy eyebrows. 

" Well ? " 

" But even to you I will assign no reason for 
the course I pursued. It was necessary that Mary 
Ware should die." 

" Well ? " 

" I decided that she should die in her chamber, 
and to that end I purloined her night-key. 

Julius Kenneth looked through and through me, 
as I spoke. • 

" On Friday night after she had gone to the 
theatre, I entered the hall-door by means of the 
key, and stole unobserved to her room, where I 
secreted myself under the bed, or in that small 
clothes-press near the stove — I forget which. 
Sometime between eleven and twelve o'clock, 
Mary Ware returned. While she was in the act 
of lighting the gas, I pressed a handkerchief, 
saturated with chloroform, over her mouth. You 



Out of his Plead. 107 

know the effect of chloroform ? I will, at this 
point spare you forther detail, merely remarking 
that I threw my gloves and the handkerchief in 
the stove ; but I'm afraid there was not fire 
enouoih to consume Ihem." 

Kenneth walked up and down the cell greatly 
agitated : then seated himself on the foot of 
the bed 

" Curse you ! " 

" Are you listening to me, Mr. Kenneth ? " 

" Yes ! " 

" I extinguished the light, and proceeded to 
make my escape from the room, which I did in a 
manner so simple that the detectives, through 
their desire to ferret out wonderful things, will 
never discover it, unless, indeed, you betray me. 
The night, you will recollect, was foggy ; it Avas 
impossible to discern an object at four yards dis- 
tance — this was fortunate for me. I raised the 
window-sash and let myself out cautiously, hold- 
ing on by the sill, until my feet touched on the 
moulding which caps the window below. I then 



108 Out of his Head. 

drew down the sash. By standing on the extreme 
left of the cornice, I was able to reach the tin 
water-spout of the adjacent building, and by that 
I descended to the sidewalk." 

The man glowered at me like a tiger, his eyes 
green and golden with excitement : I have since 
wondered that he did not tear me to pieces. 

" On gaining the street," I continued coolly, 
" I found that I had brought the knife with me. 
It should have been left in the chamber — it 
would have given the whole thing the aspect of 
suicide. It was too late to repair the blunder, so 
I threw the knife — " . 

" Into the river ! " exclaimed Kenneth, involun- 
tarily. 

And then I smiled. 

" How did you know it "was I ! " he shrieked. 

" Hush ! they will overhear you in the corridor. 
It was as plam as day. I knew it before I had 
been five minutes in the room. First, because 
you shrank instinctively from the corpse, though 
you seemed to be caressing it. Secondly, when I 



1 



Out of Ms Head. 109 

looked into the stove, I saw a glove and hand- 
kerchief, partly consumed ; and then I instantly ac- 
counted for the faint close smell which had affected 
me before the room was ventilated. It was chloro- 
form. Thirdly, when I went to open the win- 
dow, I noticed that the paint was scraped off the 
brackets which held the spout to the next house. 
This conduit had been newly painted two days 
previously — I watched the man at work ; the 
paint on the brackets was thicker than anywhere 
else, and had not dried. On looking at your feet, 
which I did critically, while speaking to you, I 
saw that the leather on, the inner side of each boot 
was slightly chafed, paint-marked. It is a way 
of mine to put this and that together ! " 

" If you intend to betray me — " 

*' O, no, but I don't, or I should not be here — 
alone with you. I am, as you may allow, not 
quite a fool." 

" Indeed, sir, you are as subtle as — " 

" Yes, I would n't mention him." 

« Who ? " 



no Out of his Head. 

" The devil." 

Kenneth mused. 

"May I ask, Mr. Lynde, what you mtend 
to do ? " )| 

" Certainly — remain here." 

" I don't understand you," said Kenneth with 
an air of perplexity. 

" If you will listen patiently, you shall learn 
why I have acknowledged this deed, why / would 
bear the penalty. I believe there are vast, inteiise 
sensations from which we are excluded, by the 
conventional fear of a certain kind of death. 
Now, this pleasure, this ecstacy, this something, 
I don't know what, which I have striven for all 
my days, is known only to a privileged few — 
innocent men, who, through some oversight of the 
law, are hanged by the neck ! How rich is 
Nature in compensations ! Some men are born to 
be hung, some have hanging thrust upon them, 
and some (as I hope to do,) achieve hanging. It 
appears ages since I commenced watching for an 
opportunity like this. Worlds could not tempt 



Out of Ms Head. Ill 

me to divulge your guilt, nor could worlds have 
tempted me to commit your crime, for a man's 
conscience should be at ease to enjoy, to the 
utmost, this delicious death ! Our interview is at 
at end, Mr. Kenneth. I held it my duty to saj 
this much to you." 

And I turned my back on him. 

" One word, Mr. Lynde." 

Kenneth came to my side, and laid a heavy 
hand on my shoulder, that red right hand, which 
all the tears of the angels cannot make white 
again. 

As he stood there, his face suddenly grew so 
familiar to me — yet so vaguely familiar — that I 
started. It seemed as if I had seen such a face, 
somewhere, in my di^eams, hundreds of years ago. 
The face in the grate. 

" Did you send this to me last month ? " asked 
Kenneth, holding up a slip of paper on which was 
scrawled, Watch them — in my handwriting. 

" Yes," I answered. 

Then it struck me that these few thoughtless 



m Out of his Head. 

words, which some sinister spirit had impelled me 
to Avrite, were the indirect cause of the whole 
catastrophe. 

"Thank you," he said hurriedly. "I watched 
them ! " Then, after a pause, " I shall go far 
from here. I can not, I icill not die yet. Mary 
was to have been my wife, so she would have 
hidden her shame — O cruel ! she, my OAvn 
cousin, and we the last two of our race ! Life is 
not sweet to me, it is bitter, bitter ; but I shall live 
until I stand front to front with him. And you ? 
They will not harm you — i/ou are a madman ! " 

Julius Kenneth was gone before I could reply. 
The cell door shut him out forever — shut him 
out in the flesh. His spirit was not so easily 
exorcised. 

After all, it was a wretched fiasco. Two 
officious friends of mine, who had played chess 
with me, at my lodgings, on the night of the 3rd, 
proved an alibi ; and I was literally turned out 
of the Tombs ; for I insisted on being executed. 



Out of Ms Head. 113 

Then it was maddening to have the newspapers 
call me a monomaniac. 

/a monomaniac ? 

What was Pythagoras, Newton, Fulton ? Have 
not the great original lights of every age, been 
regarded as madmen ? Science, like religion, has 
its martyrs. 

Recent surgical discoveries have, I believe, sus- 
tained me in my theory ; or, if not, they ought to 
have done so. There is said to be a pleasure in 
drowning. Why not in strangulation ? 

In another field of science, I shall probably 
have full justice awarded me — I now allude to 
the Moon-Apparatus, which is still in an un- 
finished state, but progressing. 



114 



Out of his llojul. 



CHAPTER XV. 



A Long Journey. 



•f;^'^jSH^J\ ULIUS KENNETH disappeared 

C^"^ from the city. If his sudden de- 

^-;J^V vjJ-. \'* parturo was noticed, it excited no 

comment. No one suspected the 



e,c*t^^^^,$^"? important r51e he had played in 
l&^^i^*^^ the ti'agedy ; and the pubhc 



D: 



a^c^^ ceased to be interested, as new 
G-^' events crowded it off the stage. 

If anybody recaUed the circumstance, it was only 
to wonder, and be lost in the impenetrable dark- 
ness which wrapt the story of ]\Iary Ware. 

I think that twelve months, or more, had 
passed when I fii*st got tidings of Julius Kenneth 
— he had sailed out of New Bedford, or INIarble- 
head, or somewhere, in a whaling ship. 



Out of his Head. 115 

For two years I lost all trace of him. Then he 
abruptly turned up at Panama, on the way to 
Calif(jrnia. 

Then I heard of liim In a small town on the 
coast of South America. 

Then in India. 

Then in Switzerland. 

Afterwards in Egypt, and Syria. 

Always wandering. 

Travellers, when they came home, spoke of a 
tall gaunt man that went stalking about the ends 
of the earth. 

And I pictured him to myself — roaming moodily 
from place to place, incessant, tireless, urged on ; 
and ever before him flew a frightened little Shape 
that was ready to drop dead, whenever it paused 
to look back, and saw this perpetual man at 
its heels. 

And the man, too, I fancied, sometimes looked 
back — and then he pressed on more rapidly. 
Always wandering. 

Whether Julius Kenneth ever caught up with 



116 Out of his Head. 

this Shape, or even if he were ever searchmg for 
any one in these weary journeys, I never knew : 
but I know that the chief trouble of my life, at 
that time, was the thought of this man coming 
and going, so ceaselessly. 

Always wandering. No resting spot. No 
tranquil fireside. But on through snow-storms. 

Whipped by the sleet. 

Burnt by the sun. 

Blinded by the bronzed dust of the desert. 

I used to lie in bed, and think of him, — 
prowling about the Pyramids, in the gray dawn ; 
or standing alone in the Arctic midnight ; or 
gazing up at the crags of Ben Nevis ; or among 
the CafFre huts ; or sitting by the camp-fires of 
the Bedouins — as fine an Arab as any of them. 
Then he drifted down reedy rivers in more boats, 
and tossed on the ocean in more ships than were 
ever built in the world. 

I was unable, even for an hour, to rid myself of 
tlie magnetic influence he exerted over me. I 
always knew where he was, or thought I knew. 



Out of Ills Head. 117 

If I took up a volume of Travels, this man 
went with me from beginning to end — always 
the hero of every perilous adventure, always 
doing everything but stopping. 

If, by any chance, I looked in at Matelli's shop- 
window, where there used to be an Alpine land- 
scape, composed of confectionary, Julius Kenneth, 
in chocolate, was always sure to be scaling sugar 
precipices, setting my hair on end with terror. 

He became an irrepressible torment to me, an 
incubus day and night. I am not clear as to how 
many years this lasted. 

But one summer morning, I woke up refreshed 
from a dream in which he did not intrude. A 
weight seemed lifted off my mind ; a cloud gone ; 
and I knew that Julius Kenneth, somewhere and 
somehow, had ended his wanderings — or, rather, 
that he had started on a very long pilgrimage ! 



118 



Out of Ms Head. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



Out of His Head. 




HE thought tliat I shall be insane, 
some day, that I shall be taken 
)from the restless world outside, tc 
some quiet inner retreat where I 
>can complete the Moon-Appara- 
tus, and fold my arms, like a man 
who has fulfilled his mission ; the 
thought of this, my probable des- 
tiny, is rather pleasant to me than otherwise. 

I say probable destiny, because a certain trivial 
aberration of mind has been handed down in our 
family from generation to generation, with the 
dented silver bowl in Avhich Miles Standish 
brewed many a punch in the olden time. This 



I 



I 



Out of his Head. 119 

punch, ] foncy, must have somehow got into the 
heads of our family, and put us out. Dr. Pende- 
o-i'ast thinks so. 

At all events, /am to be insane. I have made 
up my mind to that. 
But not yet. 

I am as reasonable and matter-of-fact as a man 
may well be. This house in which I pass my 
days and nights, writing, is not an asylum : this 
mullioned window, I grant you, is substantially 
barred ; but that is to keep mad folks out. I sit 
here, by the grating, and watch them — princes 
and beggars, going up and down. Am I to 
become mellow in the head like these ? 
Ay ; but not yet. 

The man who brings me food three times a day, 
is not my keeper ; the refined and cheerful 
gentlemen with whom I converse in our hio;h- 
walled garden, are not monomaniacs. 

There is Sir Philip Sidney, Avho occupies an 
elegant suit of drawing-rooms on my left — the 
patlietic dandy ! I like him, though. When he 



m Out of his Head. 

takes off his kids, lie has pluck. There is the 
learned Magliabechi, on my right, busy with his 
rare folios. There is the moon-painter, Claude 
Lorraine (fifth floor, back,) who talks in pig- 
ments, as if he had swallowed a spear of the 
northern lights. And there is young John Keats, 
down stairs, pondering over a vellum-bound mis- 
sal, illumined by some monk of the middle ages. 
(Keats informs me that he seriously thinks of 
finishing that fragment of Hyperion.) 

Thep are not idiots, as the times go ; they are 
glorious poets and philanthropists whose thoughts 
are the blood of the world. 

The shadow of the church-steeple has slanted 
across the street. It is twilight. The air is full 
of uncertain shapes and sounds ; the houses over 
the way, look as if they Avere done in sepia ; 
people are walking dreamily through the hushed 
streets, like apparitions ; and the agile apothecary, 
on the corner, has fired up the amber and emerald 
jars in his show-case. 



I 



Out of his Head. 121 

The girl in the tailor's shop, opposite, leans out 
of the window, brown in the dusk, a mere crayon 
outline of a girl ; she fastens back the blind, show- 
ing me how prettily she is made. Now the lamps 
are lighted. The grocery-man's boy lounges^ 
looking up at her window. I wonder if he is 
watching the plump little figure that comes and 
goes on the curtain ? 

It is twilight. Everything is comforted and 
subdued : a gentle spirit lays its finger on the lips 
of care .... even on my lips . . . 

Here comes that genial man, with the wire- 
covered candle, and my supper. 

" How do you find yourself, sir ? " says the 
man, smiling benignantly at the ceiling. 

" Extremely well, thank you, what's-your- 
name," I reply. " By the way, I wish you'd 
tell Magliabechi that I'd like to have a word 
with him." 

" Now, could n't you be so kind as to wait till 
morning ? " says the man, pleasantly. 



m Out of Ms Head. 

I look upon this as very considerate in him, and 
conclude to wait. 

I wonder who he is ? 
• He certainly takes great interest in me. I will 
do somethincr for him, when the Moon- Apparatus 
is completed. He deserves it. Dr. Pendegrast 
must know him. If I should ever get out of my 
head, and I shall, some day, I know, it would be 
pleasant to have such a well-bred, affable fellow 
for my — 

Alas ! how can I speak thus confidently of the 
future, when — if my calculations are correct, and 
everything assures they are — the long-expected 
crisis is at hand? How can I pen these worse 
than idle words, when I have barely time to con- 
clude the task which I dare not leave undone or 
slighted ? 

What people are these hovering silently in the 
sliadow of my bookcases ? Who is the slight girl 
that looks upon me with such serious eyes ? and 
who is she that seems so woe-begone in her 



Out 01 Ills Flead. m 

tinselled dress ? There are two men in the group 
— a pale, sad man, like one I knew long ago : a 
tall, brawny man, stained witli travel, his face 
scorched by the sun, and his feet red with desert 
sand. The end must be near since these have 
come to me. 

Hasten back, wayworn pilgrims, to the dim 
confines of the world we are to share together. 

" Stay for me there ! I shall not fail 
To meet thee in that hollow vale." 



m 



Out of liis Head. 



CHAPTER XVI 



Burning a Witch. 




HE incongruous events of my 
life will no longer appear inexpli- 
cable, wlien read by the light of 
the revelation which I am on the 
i)oint of copying from this creased 
and yellowed manuscript — this 
manuscript which I have worn in 
my bosom, and read a thousand 
times, since the fatal morning when a boyish 
cui'iosity — ah, it was something more than that ! 
— tempted me to seek for hidden treasures among 
my father's papers, in the chest, where they had 
lain mouldering years after his death. 



Out of liis Head. 1%5 

That day I became possessed of the secret 
which has tmctured all my life. That day I read 
my doom, written out by his own hand — the 
liand that was no more lifted up in battle against 
tlie world. 

The Avords are half obliterated, the tattered 
pages are falling to pieces. Quick ! let me copy 
them. 

Matthew Lynde's Legend of the Jocelyn House. 

" On the seventeenth of August, in the year 
16 — , the morning sun, resting obliquely on the 
gables and roof-tops of Portsmouth, lighted up 
one of those grim spectacles not unusual in New 
England at that period. 

" A woman was to be burnt for witchcraft. 

" Goodwife Walforde, who lived with her son 
Reuben in a lonely, tu.mble-down shanty, on the 
edge of the village, had been seen at various 
times, and in divers places, to wring her hands, 
and cry out aloud, without any perceptible cause. 

" This was not to be permitted. 



m Out of ills Head. 

" Witchcraft was tlien spreading like a pesti- 
lence over the country. Several persons, possessed 
of unnatural and un-Godly powers, had already 
undergone martyrdom at Salem ; and as the wo- 
man Walforde hacl the doubtful reputation of 
telling fortunes, making love-charms, and the like, 
the cry of witchery flew like wald-fire from door 
to door ; and a thousand vagaries, sometimes 
coined out of nothing, perhaps, passed current 
as truth. 

" One woman, by the name of Langdon, de- 
clared that she had repeatedly seen Goodwife 
Walforde careering through the mist, on a broom- 
stick, over Piscataqua river ; another had caught 
her mumbling to six brindled cats in a wood ; 
Avhile more than a dozen had frequently noticed 
curious puff's of smoke issuing from her nostrils. 

" So, of course, she was a Witch. 

" The executive authorities took heat at these 
facts, and the freckled crone was brought up 
before the Court of Assistants, and condemned to 
be publicly burnt, '• accordinge toe ye ryghteous 



Out of ills Head. 127 

decision of ye Elders of ye Cliurclie — all God- 
fearino;e menne." 

" Just as the sunlight struck across the spire 
of the village meeting-house, a bell commenced 
tolling with mournful dissonance ; and groups 
of men and women, from different streets, moved 
thoughtfully toward the Court House. 

" The crowd here assembled was composed of 
formal-looking men with long pointed beards and 
sugar-loaf hats; children, serious for the moment ; 
old men who seemed like children ; and not a few 
of the gentle sex, arrayed in the A^oluminous gray 
hoods which, at that time, were worn by the 
lower classes. 

" Here and there, under the shadow of the 
trees, standing aloof from the common herd, were 
knots of the more wealthy and influential citizens. 
No one spoke, save in suppressed whispers, and a 
hum as of innumerable bees rose up from the 
multitude. 

" This murmuring suddenly ceased, as Reuben 



m Out of Ms Head. 

Walforde came rushing, like a man demented, 
into the Court-yard. 

" ' Desist in your unholy purpose ! ' he cried, 
flinging his arms aloft. ' Are ye heathen, that 
ye would burn a harmless woman, in mid-day, 
here, in New England ? ' 

" ' That's the witch's whelp,' remarked a lean, 
straio;ht-haired Puritan to a neighbor beside him. 

" ' What d' ye say ? ' cried Reuben Walforde, 
fiercely, turning on the speaker, ' Shall I strangle 
ye!' 

" He clutched the man's collar, and shook him 
so stoutly that the Puritan's crucible-shaped hat 
flew several feet into the air ; and then the by- 
standers laughed. 

" At this moment, two persons on horseback 
joined the throng. 

" The elder of the two was dressed in a hand- 
some suit of black cut velvet, and wore hio-h 
knee-boots of Spanish leather, the tops elabo- 
rately laced with silk cord. The housing of his 
horse proclaimed him a man of rank. Behind 



Out of his Head. m 

liim rode a young gentleman of somewhat foppish 
bearing, in a coat of fine maroon-colored cloth 
and white satin vest sprinkled with embroidered 
tulips. Waves of Mechlin lace broke into foam 
at his wrists. His hat was looped up on one side 
with an expensive brooch, from which dangled a 
fleecy black plume. 

" ' The worshipful John Jocelyn,' passed quickly 
from mouth to mouth. 

" Reuben Walforde released the terrified Pu- 
ritan, and stood scowling at him. The worshipful 
John Jocelyn, who rode a few paces in advance 
of his son Arthur, pressed through the rabble, 
never drawing rein until he confronted the dis- 
putants. 

*' ' It ill-behoves thee, Reuben Walforde,' he 

said sternly, ' to be quarrelling like a drunken 

Indian on such a day as this. Thou hadst better 

thank Heaven,' he added, in a lower tone, ' that 

the Evil One hath not laid his claw on thee, as 

he hath on thy stricken mother.' 

" ' Go thy way, worshipful John Jocelyn,' 
6* 



130 Out of liis Head. 

returned the young man, scornfully. ' Is it be- 
coming in thee, or any meaner man, to taunt 
misfortune ? Go thy way, before I am tempted 
to lay hold on thy person, and make thee to bite 
the dust ! ' 

" At this violent and rebellious speech, spoken 
in a loud, angry voice, the crowd swayed to 

and fro. 

" The brow of the magistrate threatened a 
storm ; but the darkness flitted by, and he said 
softly, 

" ' I know not, Reuben Walforde, if I have ever 
injured thee. I see how thou art beside thj^self, 
this day, and pity thy plight, or else I would < 
have thee exhibited in the Market-Place for four- 
and-twenty-hours.' 

" And the kind-hearted John Jocelyn would 
have ridden on, but Reuben Walforde laid his 
powerful hand on the check-rein, and brought the 
horse to its haunches. 

" A moment, worshipful John Jocelyn ! Let 
me lead thy horse from these impudent gossips. 



Out of Ms Head. 131 

There, now, they cannot hear us. Thou hast two 
wives in the church-yard — one whom I never 
saw, the mother of thy Arthur, yonder ; but the 
other was as comely a maiden as there is in all 
New England, and her I loved as a man loves 
who loves but once. Thou didst win her from 
me, and she died. Thou art death to me and 
mine. In this trial of my mother, thou hast 
shown thyself wonderfully officious, giving willing 
credence to all the unseemly lies of the village. 
Thy malice, or whatever it is, is her ruin ; for the 
people look up to thee as a ruler." 

" ' Verily, young man,' responded the magis- 
,trate gently, ' thou art blasphemous to name thy 
weird mother with that fair saint whom on earth 
we called Hepzibah. Of thy love for her who 
was Hepzibah Jocelyn, I know naught. As to 
thy mother, I acted as became a Christian and a 
Magistrate in the sight of Heaven. Let go the 
bridle, Reuben Walforde ; for my presence must 
sanction the ceremony about to take place. Even 



m Out of ids Head. 

now the procession issuetli from the prison-yard. 
Release thy hold, I warn thee ! ' 

" Reuben Walforde threw a hurried glance to- 
ward the train, which uncoiled itself from the j)rison- 
door, like a slender ebony adder, and took a 
zig-zag course in the direction of the Court-House. 
Then he gave a howl, and sprang upon the 
worshipful John Jocelyn. 

" ' Ho ! good folk ! Seize the fellow ! ' cried 
John Jocelyn lustily ; then he grew purple in the 
face, for the fingers at his tlu'oat had well nigh 
pressed out his breath. 

" Arthur Jocelyn put spurs to the flanks of his 
mare, and dealt Walforde a blow on the wrist 
with the loaded butt of his riding- whip. 

" The magistrate and his assailant were speedily 
separated : the former, after arranging his frill and 
sleeve-ruffles, rode forward to the Court-House ; 
and the latter was confined in the Cage, from 
which he was liberated at sunset, by the magis- 
trate's own order, for he harbored no enmity 
against the unfortunate youth. 



Out of liis Head. 133 

" That Reuben Walforde had dared to lift his 
thoughts so high as Hepzibah's love, was strange 
intelligence to John Jocelyn. His prosecution of 
Dame Walforde had been actuated by nothing but 
a sober desire to burn out the evil power which 
had recently displayed itself in many of the 
neighboring townships, filling the community with 
direst consternation. 

" That malignant spirits walked the earth then, 
as now, who can doubt ? 

" The sun went down on Portsmouth, and the 
event of the day became a matter to be canvassed 
by toothless gossips in the chimney-corner. Then 
it was gradually forgotten. 

" But mysterious sounds hung in the air for 
months afterward — lingered near lonely places 
on the river, and in the dismal December woods. 
And sometimes, in autumn, in this nineteenth 
century, it is said that a voice of supplication and 
complaint is heard in the wind and rain at night ! 

" In those days the old Jocelyn House — 
which has been so patched and altered that not an 



134 Out oi' Ms Head. 

original shingle or clapboard remains — stood 
somewhat back from the principal thoroughfare, 
in the shade of two gigantic elms. 

•' To-day a brick sidewalk runs by the modern- 
ish door-stoop. The curtailed eaves, the gambrel 
roof, and the few quaint devices left on the quoms 
and over the dormer-windows, give one no idea of 
that imposing pile of architecture as it appeared 
in its glory. 

" The room with the bay-windows facing Avest- 
ward, was John Jocelyn's study. His ponderous 
sword hung over the wide fire-place in company 
with a steel casque and hauberk, dinted and rusty 
— once the property of some Spanish caballero 
who had served, perchance, under the gallant 
Pedro de Alvarado or, maybe, under Cortes 
himself. 

" On a venerable book-stand were a few evan- 
gelical volumes, brought over in the May Flower. 

" The chairs, and all the scanty furniture of 
tiie apartment, had an air of solemnity in keeping 
with a full-length portrait of Sir Godfrey Jocelyn, 



Out of Ms Head. 135 

in a plum-colored coat trimmed with tarnished 
gold-braid, which frowned abstractedly between 
the casements from a filio-raned frame. 

" In summer, the modest tea-roses looked in at 
the window. In winter, a fire of hemlock logs 
simmered and sneezed with impish merriment, 
throwing a hundred fantastic shapes on the walls, 
till the polished oak wainscoting seemed like 
mirrors Mdierein eccentric goblins viewed them- 
selves. 

Here, since the death of his young wife, sat the 
worshipful magistrate alone, late at night, reading, 
cogitating on his official duties, or writing courtly 
letters to his kinsmen in England. 

" One night very late — for the village watch- 
man had just cried " twelve, and all's well " — 
as Arthur Jocelyn neared the domicile, having 
passed the evening at the Green Mermaid, he 
saw, or thought he saw the form of a man gliding 
stealthily away from under the window of his 
father's study. 

" Young Jocelyn, who had been drinking 



136 Out of his Head. 

deeply of something besides the nut-brown ale, so 
famous in those days, stopped short in the middle 
of a careless tavern-snatch he was singing, and 
cried out, 

'"Hullo! Sir Shadow! What! art thou a 
ghost ? Then the fiend catch thee, and all grave- 
yard people who cannot sleep decently o' nights.' 

" A coarse lauo-h startled the echoes in the 
village street. Then all was still as death. 

" On reaching the house, Arthur hastened with 
uneven steps to the study. There he beheld a 
scene that drove the vapors of the Avine from his 
brain. 

"John Jocelyn, with a sword . wound in his 
left breast, lay motionless across the lounge. 

" Papers were scattered over the floor ; a chair 
broken ; a glass timepiece splintered on the hearth ; 
the prints of fingers on the window-sill ; the 
blinds gaping wide open. 

" Arthur took in all at a glance. 

" ' Murdered ! ' 

" The ejaculation had barely escaped him, 



Out of Ms Head. 187 

when he heard a dry rustling at the further end 
of the library. 

" His sword leaped ovit of its sheath like a flasli 
of licrhtnino;, 

" The sound proceeded from the portrait of Sir 
Godfrey Jocelyn. The crackled canvas had 
commenced bulging and warping. Presently the 
form of Sir Godfrey impatiently disengaged itself 
from the gloomy background of the picture, and 
stepped majestically out of the frame. 

"Arthur's sword, of its own volition, performed 
a military salute : Arthur himself was simply 
turned to stone with astonishment and awe. 

" ' Arthur Jocelyn ! ' said Sir Godfrey, in a 
tone that seemed to reverberate in the family 
vault, ' mine eyes have gazed upon a most foul 
deed. It is a sorry fate that I, though dead, am 
forced through the agency of an impious painter, 
to still behold the deviltries of this world. I have 
broken out of these vile oil-colors with indig-nation. 
Such a sight ! — thy poor father, boy ! By 
St. George, if my hilt had not tangled in my 



1-38 Out of his Head. 

baldric, the same as it did at the battle of Guione- 
gaste, I would have slain the clown Walforde 
myself! ' 

'"Walforde! That witch's foal hath done 
this, then ? ' 

' Even so,' retm'ned Sir Godfrey laconically ; 
then his ashen eyes crinkled with sudden heat — 
' but the knave hath carried away such a sword- 
cut on his lip as will mar his family to the last 
generation. Now listen : This mad deed which 
hath ended the career of a rif>;hteous and ex- 
emplary man, hath given thee a long lease of life. 
The Eldei's, Arthur, will hang thee for thy 
father's death ; but be of good cheer — the end 
is not yet.' 

" Arthur's head sunk on his bosom. 

" ' When a hundred and fifty years have fled, 
thou shalt live again : thou shalt wear the face 
and form of to-night — and woe then to the 
descendants of the Walforde that cross thy path ! 
Thou shalt see them suffer. Thou shalt sweep 
them from the face of the earth ; thou shalt 



Out of ills Head. 139 

utterly blot out tlie race — nay, not by violence, 
not even with thine own free will, perchance. 
Yet shalt thou lead them directly or indirectly, to 
the death. And when the clock is on the stroke 
of twelve, a hundred and seventy-five years from 
this night, I will appear before thee, Arthur, 
thoujih thou wert amono; the savafTes of Hin- 
dostan, and lead thee back to the grave, where 
thou shalt slumber quietly for all time ! ' 

" Then tlie sepulchral voice of Sir Godfrey 
died away. 

" Arthur started with a shock, like one who 
wakens from a nightmare at the dead of night. 

" The old portrait hung in its accustomed place 
on the wall, as flat and burred and crackled as in 
Arthur's childhood. 

" A wild vibrating cry came from the Jocelyn 
House. 

" The o;rim Puritans turned in their beds ; the 
beadle yawned, and the village undertaker, in his 
sleep, dug an imaginary grave. 

" ' Help ! help ! ' cried the voice. 



140 Out of Ms Head. 

" ' Help ' said the echoes, spitefully, retreating 
to the woods ; and there, among the crags, they 
repeated the cry. 

" Sick men heard it and shuddered ; and wakeful 
mothers held their babes nearer to their bosoms. 
The town-sentinels discharged their matchlocks at 
shadows, then myriads of lanterns twinkled in the 
dusky streets, the church-bell began ringing, and 
armed men hurried to and fro. 

" ' Are the Indians upon us again ? ' asked one. 

" ' No, but a murder has been done in our 
midst.' 

" Now, when the good people found Arthur 
Jocelyn standing by the casement with a naked 
sword in his grasp, and saw the worshij^ful magis- 
trate lying amort on the lounge, threatening brows 
were bent on the young man, and Suspicion 
pointed a black finger at him. 

" So, in due time, the Elders hanged Arthur 
Jocelyn. And that he may slumber softly in the 
mould, and rise not until the Ano-el of the Resur- 
rection call him, let all good souls pray. 



Out of lii8 Head. 141 

" Such is the Legend of the Jocelyn 

House — an old nurse-wife's tale which I have 
preserved simply because my father used to amuse 
us children with it, on winter evenings, when the 
family were gathered at the hearth-side. He was 
a graphic raconteur ; and I remember how I 
listened and trembled as Sir Godfrey Jocelyn 
stepped out of the picture. I cannot explain to 
myself why the story, now that I write it down, 
affects me so strongly. Curiously enough, if such a 
silly old legend could be true, my son Paul is the 
descendant who, according to the prophecy of 
Sir Godfrey — but, pshaw ! this is madness. I 
would like for Paul to read this narrative some 
time. I dare not trust him with it now, for the 
boy is excitable to a degree that often alarms me. 
I pray heaven he may be spared the affliction that 
obscured his grandfather's last days, an^ which, I 
sometimes think, threatens to darken mine. 

Matthew Lynde. 

November, 183T." 



Ill 



Out of his Ikwii 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



Two Hundred Yeaks Old. 



UCH is the key to the meaning 
of this sombre chronicle. 

In now shapes oki spirits are 
broatheJ into the worhl, and I 
:nn that pale Arthur .Tocelvn 
whom the EUlors persecuted cen- 
turies ago, when bigotry and 
superstition fell like a blight on 
the Colony — I, Paul Lynde. 

Bitterly has the prophecy been fulfilled. "With- 
out my own will, and unconsciously, I have woven 
the black threads of my life with the fote of 
those who came of a generation that hated me 
and mine. 




Qui of liis Head. 143 

Cecil is dead. Mark Sowland sleeps in an ill- 
starred city. Mary Ware is dead ; and Kenneth 
— the last of his race. Kenneth? Kenneth ? 
r think it was Reuben Walforde that went stalking 
about the ends of the earth ! 

They are gone — the white spirits and the gray. 
And the time draws near, ah, so near ! when my 
grim ancestor shall appear, and take me into that 
darkness which awaits us all. 

Again I shall behold Sir Godfrey, clad in the 
garb of a by-gone age, as I beheld him that 
memorable night in John Jocelyn's library. 

I shall hear his echoing voice, feel the humid 
touch of his hand ! 

****** 

Listen I — no, the wind brushes the elm-tree 
against the house, and the stair-case creaks with 
the frost. 

Heaven, how the moments whirl by ! 

People are dancing to dulcet music in fragrant 
rooms : lovers are whispering together in shadowy 
alcoves : mothers are caressing their children : 



144 Out of Ms Head. 

there are millions of happy souls in the world, 
and I — 

Listen ! — I wish the wind would 'nt groan so 
in the flue. I wish the elm-tree would n't stand 
out there, in the night, frantically tossing up its 
arms like an old witch at the stake. 

Only an hour, now. Only sixty minutes ! I 
would they were so many centuries : for life is 
still SAveet, still youth clings to it, and I am young, 
though I am Two Hundred Years Old — 

Hark ! — the clock is striking ! 



Out of Ids Head. 145 



NOTE BY THE EDITOR. 

Mr. Lynde, like the author of Tlie Anatomy^ 
seems to have predicted the time of his own de- 
mise ; but his prediction, unHke that of the melan- 
choly Burton, proved inaccurate. 

Two years after the preceding chapter vv^as pen- 
ned, I find Mr. Lynde besieging the Patent Office 
at Washington, with a Nautical Self-Speaking 
Trumpet, which, on being inflated by an air-pump, 
would deliver all the orders necessary for working 
a ship, allowing the skipper, in the meanwhile, to 
stow himself snugly away in his bunk below. 
This, as Mr. Lynde modestly remarked in his let- 
ter to the Department, would be very convenient, 
especially in " nasty weather." As the walls of 
that respectable institution, the Patent Office, en- 
close the skeletons of numerous inventions nearly 
as rational, I fail to see why Mr. Lynde's Trumpet 



146 Out of Ms Head. 

was denied a niche in the collection. The Depart- 
ment refused to listen to it. 

The precise date of this unfortunate gentleman's 
death is unknown to me, his relatives, with strange 
reticence, having declined to furnish me with the 
slightest information concerning his last hours. 
Dr. Pendegrast, also, when I applied to him, dealt 
in such ambiguous and unsatisfactory assertions, 
that I left the Asylum more than half convinced 
that Mr. Lynde had not died at all ; but was still 
living and ready to smile, perhaps, over his own 
obituary. That he was alive as late as 1861 is 
proved by one of the papers in his Sketch-Book, 
— a collection of MS placed at my disposal since 
this romance went to press. I print the papers 
here. As an ' illustration of a different phase of 
Mr. Lynde's mind, I trust they will not prove un- 
interestinsf. 



PAUL LYNDE'S SKETCH BOOK. 



Pere Antoine's Date Palm. 



149 



PERE ANTOINE'S DATE PALM. 

A Iiegend of New Orleans. 




T is useless to discniise the fact : 
Miss Badeau is a rebel. 

Mr. Beauregard's cannon had not 
done battering the walls of Sumter, 
.when Miss Badeau was packed up, 
'labelled, and sent North, where she 
has remained ever since in a sort of 
aromatic, rose-colored state of re- 
bellion. 

She is not one of your sanguinary rebels, you 
know ; she has the good sense to shrink with hor- 
ror from the bare mention of those heathen who, 
at Manassas and elsewhere, wreaked their unman- 
ly spite on the bodies of our dead heroes : still she 



150 Sketch-Book. 

is a bitter little rebel, with blond hair, superb eye- 
lashes, and two brothers in the Confederate service 
— if I may be allowed to club the statements. 
When I look across the narrow strait of our board- 
ing-house table, and observe what a handsome 
wretcn she is, 1 begin to think that if Mr. Seward 
doesn't presently take her in charge, / shall. 

The preceding paragraphs have little or nothing 
to do with what I am going to relate : they merely 
illustrate how wildly a fellow will write, when the 
eyelashes of a pretty woman get tangled with his 
pen. So I let them stand — as a warning. 

My exordium should have taken this shape : — 

'' I hope and trust," remarked Miss Badeau, in 
that remarkably scathing tone which she assumes 
in alluding to the United States Volunteers, " I 
hojie and trust, that, when your five hundred 
tliousand, more or less, men capture my New Or- 
leans, tliey will have the good taste not to injure 
Pcre Antoine's Date-Palm." 

"Not a hair of its head shall be touched," I re- 



Pere Antoine's Date Palm. 151 

plied, without having the faintest idea of what I 
was talking about. 

" Ah ! I hope not," she said. 

There was a certain tenderness in her voice 
which struck me. 

" Who is P^re Antoine ? " I ventured to ask. 

" And what is this tree that seems to interest 
you so ? " 

" I will tell you." 

Then Miss Badeau told mc the followino; legend, 
which I think worth writing; down. If it should 
appear tame to the reader, it will be because I 
haven't a black ribbed-silk dress, and a strip of 
point-lace around my throat, like Miss Badeau ; it 
will be because I haven't her eyes and lips and mu- 
sic to tell it with, confound me ! 

Near the levee, and not far from the old French 
cathedral, in New Orleans, stands a fine date-palm, 
some thirty feet high, growing out in the open air 
as sturdily as if its roots were sucking sap from 
their native earth. 

Sir Charles Lyell, in his " second visit to the 



152 Sketch-Book. 

United States," mentions this exotic : — " The 
tree is seventy or eighty years old ; for P^re An- 
toine, a Roman CathoHc priest, who died about 
twenty years ago, told Mr. Bringier that he plant- 
ed it himself, when he was young. In his will he 
provided that they who succeeded to this lot of 
ground should forfeit it, if they cut down the palm." 
Wishing to learn something of Pdre Antoine's 
history, Sir Charles Lyell made inquiries among the 
ancient Creole inhabitants of the faubourg. That 
the old priest, in his last days, became very much 
emaciated, that he walked about the streets like a 
munnny, that he gradually dried up, and finally 
blew away, was the meagre result of the tourist's 
investigations. 

This is. all that is generally known of Pere An- 
toine. Miss Badeau's story clothes these bare 
flicts. 

When Pere Antoine Avas a very young man, he 
liad a friend whom he loved as he loved his eyes. 
Emile Jardin returned his passion, and the two, 
on account of their friendship, became the marvel 



Pere Antoine's Date Palm. 153 

of the city where they dwelt. One was never 
seen without the other ; for they studied, walked, 
ate, and slept together. 

Antoine and Emile were preparing to enter the 
Church; indeed, they had taken the preliminary 
steps, when a circumstance occurred which changed 
the color of their lives. 

A foreign lady, from some far-off island in the 
Pacific, had a few months before moved into their 
neighborhood. The lady died suddenly, leaving 
a girl of sixteen or seventeen entirely friendless 
and unprovided for. The young men had been 
kind to the woman during her illness, and at her 
death, melting with pity at the forlorn situation of 
Anglice, the daughter, swore between themselves 
to love and watch over her as if she were their 
sister. 

Now Anglice had a wild, strange beauty, that 
made other women seem tame beside her ; and in 
the course of time the young men found them- 
selves regarding their ward not so much like broth- 
ers as at first. 



154 Sketcli-Book. 

They struggled with their destiny manfully, for 
the holy orders which they were about to assume 
precluded the idea of love and marriage. 

But every day taught them to be more fond ot 
her. Even priests are human. So they drifted 
on. The weak like to temporize. 

One night Eraile Jardin and Anglice were not 
to be found. 

They had flown — but whither, nobody knew, 
and nobody, save Antoine, cared. 

It was a heavy blow to Antoine — for he had 
half made up his mind to run away with her him- 
self. 

A strip of paper slipped fl*om a volume on An- 
toine's desk, and fluttered to his feet. 

" Do not he angry, ^^ said the bit of paper, pite- 
ously ; '■'■ forgive us, for we love.'''' 

Three years went by wearily enough. 

Antoine had entered the Church, and was al- 
ready looked upon as a rising man ; but his face 
was pale and his heart leaden, for there was no 
sweetness in life for him. 



Pere Antoine's Date Palm. 155 

Four years had elapsed, Mdien a letter, covered 
with outlandish stamps, was brought to the young 
•priest — a letter from Anglice. She was dying ; 
— would he forgive her ? Emile, the year pre- 
vious, had fallen a victim to the fever that raged 
on the island ; and their child, little Anglice, was 
likely to follow him. In pitiful terms she begged 
Antoine to take charge of the child until she was 
old enough to enter a convent. The epistle was 
finished by another hand, informing Antoine of 
Madame Jardin's death ; it also told him that 
Anglice had been placed on board a vessel shortly 
to leave the island for some Western port. 

The letter was hardly read and wept over, when 
little Anglice arrived. 

On beholding her, Antoine* uttered a cry of joy 
and surprise — she was so like the woman he had 
worshipped. 

As a man's tears are more pathetic than a wo- 
man's, so is his love more intense — not more en- 
during, or half so subtle, but intenser. 

The passion that had been crowded down in his 



156 Sketch-Book. 

heart broke out and lavished its richness on this 
child, who was to him, not only the Anglice of 
years ago, but his friend E mile Jardin also. 
Anglice possessed the wild, strange beauty of 
her mother — the bending, willowy form, the rich 
tint of skin, the large tropical eyes, that had al- 
most made Antoine's sacred robes a mockery to 
him. 

For a month or two Anglice was wildly unhap- 
py in her new home. She talked continually of 
the bright country where she was born, the fruits 
and flowers and blue skies — the tall fan-like trees, 
and the streams that went murmuring; through 
them to the sea. Antoine could not pacify her. 

By and by she ceased to weep, and went about 
the cottage with a dreary, disconsolate air that cut 
Antoine to the heart. A long-tailed paroquet, 
which she had brought with her in the ship, 
walked solemnly behind her from room to room, 
mutely pining, it seemed, for those heavy orient 
airs that used to ruffle its brilliant plumage. 

Before the year ended, he noticed that the rud- 



Pere Antoine's Date Palm. 151 

dy tinge had fled from her cheek, that her eyes 
had grown languid, and her sHght figure more 
willowy than ever. 

A physician was consulted. He could discover 
nothing wrong with the child, except this fading 
and drooping. He failed to account for that. It 
was some vague disease of the mind, he said, be- 
yond his skill. 

So Anglice faded day after day. She seldom 
left the room now. Antoine could not shut out 
the fact that the child was passing away. He had 
learned to love her so ! 

" Dear heart," he said once, " what is't that ails 
thee?" 

" Nothing, mon pSre," for so she called him. 

The winter passed, the balmy spring air had 
come, and Anglice seemed to revive. In her little 
bamboo chair, on the porch, she swayed to and 
fro in the fragrant breeze, with a peculiar undula- 
ting motion, like a graceful tree. 

At times something seemed to weigh upon her 
mind. Antoine noticed it, and waited. 



158 Sketcli-Book. 

At length she spoke. 

" Near our house," said little Anglice — " near 
our house, on the island, the palm-trees are waving 
under the blue sky. Oh, how beautiful ! I seem 
to lie beneath them all day long. I am very, very 
happy. I yearned for them so much that I grew 
sick — dont you think it was so, mon p^re ? " 

"Mon Dieu, yes! " exclaimed Antoine, sudden- 
ly. " Let us hasten to those pleasant islands 
where the palms are waving." 

Anglice smiled. 

" I am going there, mon pere ! " 

Ay, indeed. A week from that evening the 
wax candles burned at her feet and forehead, light- 
ing her on her journey. 

All was over. Now was Antoine's heart emp- 
ty. Death, like another Emile, had stolen his new 
Anglice. He had nothing to do but to lay the 
blighted flower away. 

Pere Antoine made a shallow grave in his gar- 
den, and heaped the fresh brown mould over his 
idol. 



Pere Antoine's Date Palm. 159 

In the genial spring evenings the priest was 
seen sitting by the mound, his finger closed in the 
unread prayer-book. 

The summer broke on that sunny land ; and in 
the cool morning twilight and after nightfall An- 
toine lingered by the grave. He could never be 
with it enough. 

One morning he observed a delicate stem, with 
two curiously shaped emerald leaves, springing up 
from the centre of the mound. At first he merely 
noticed it casually : but at length the plant grew 
so tall, and was so strangely unlike anything he 
had ever seen before, that he examined it with 
care. 

How straight and graceful and exquisite it was ! 
When it swung to and fro with the summer wind, 
in the twilight, it seemed to Antoine as if little 
Anglice were standing there in the garden ! 

The days stole by, and Antoine tended the fra- 
gile shoot, wondering what sort of blossom it would 
unfold, white, or scarlet, or golden. One Sunday, 
a stranger, with a bronzed, weather-beaten face 



160 Sketcii-Book. 

like a sailor's, leaned over the garden rail, and 
said to him : 

" What a fine young date-palm you have there, 
sir ! " 

" Mon Dieu ! " cried Pere Antoine, " and is it 
a palm?" 

" Yes, indeed," returned the man. " I had no 
idea the tree would flourish in this climate." 

" Mon Dieu ! " was all the priest could say. 

If Pdre Antoine loved the tree before, he wor- 
shipped it now. He watered it, and nurtured it, 
and could have clasped it in his arms. Here were 
Eraile and Anglice and the child, all in one ! 

The years flew by, and the date palm and the 
priest grew together — only one became vigorous 
and the other feeble. P^re Antoine had long 
passed the meridian of life. The tree was in its 
youth. It no longer stood in an isolated garden ; 
for homely brick and wooden houses had clustered 
about Antoine's cottage. They looked down 
scoAvling on the humble thatched roof. The city 
was edging up, trying to crowd him off" his land. 
But he clung to it, and refused to sell. 



Pere Antoine's Date Palm. 161 

Speculators piled gold on his doorsteps, and he 
laughed at them. Sometimes he was hungry, but 
he laughed none the less. 

" Get thee behind me, Satan ! " said the old 
priest's smile. 

P^re Antoine was very old now, scarcely able 
to walk ; but he could sit under the pliant, caress- 
ing leaves of his tree^nd there he sat till the 
grimmest of speculators came to him. But even 
in death P^re Antoine was faithful to his trust. 
The owner of that land loses it, if he harm the 
date-tree. 

And there it stands in the narrow, dingy street, 
a beautiful, dreamy stranger, an exquisite foreign 
lady whose grace is a joy to the eye, the incense 
of whose breath makes the air enamored. A 
precious boon is she to the wretched city; and 
when loyal men again walk those streets, may the 
hand wither that touches her ungently. 

" Because it grew from the heart of little An- 
glice," said Miss Badeau, tenderly. 



16^ 



Sketcii-Book. 



A WORD FOR THE TOWN. 

A City Idyl. 

ORYDON may neglect his flock, 
if he will, and burst an oaten pipe 
for Phillida, if he wants to ; Amyn- 
tas may lie on a sunny hill-side in 
Arcady if such is his pleasure, and 
bake himself as browTi as a bun ; 
but as for me, I will have none of 
the country. 

The country is rainy and muddy in spring, hot 
and dusty in summer, and unendurable in winter. 
It is true, there is a bit of Indian summer, run in 
parenthetically, at the close of the year. And 
this is is pleasant, providing you have bright com- 




A Woi'd for the Town. 163 

pany, picturesque scenery, and the prospect of re- 
turning to town before Nature begins her annual 
world-cleaning and whitewashing. 

But when the autumnal pageant has passed ; 
when the ochre and crimson, and chocolate-colored 
leaves are rotting under foot; when the trees 
about the house shiver and moan in the twilight, 
like rheumatic old ladies ; when the wind whistles 
down the chimney, and up your coat-sleeves ; when 
you'can no longer walk with Mademoiselle Sylvia 
in the moonlight ; when, in short, the Indian sum- 
mer has gone off in a whift", then it is time for you 
to be out of the country. You should not linger 
there for winter to tuck you up under its white 
coverlid. 

But the Town ! 

Ay, that is the place not for a day, but for all 
time. That we have rain and mud in spring, and 
wretched snow in winter, is not to be denied ; but 
then we have sidewalks, and Amaryllis is particu- 
larly tempting during these periods. The grace, 
care, and coquettishness with which she keeps her 



164 Sketch-Book. 

snowy drapery immaculate, are wonderful. A 
single glimpse of Amaiyllis, as she crosses over to 
Stewart's, more than pays one for the moist incon- 
veniences of bad weather. 

Spring in the city ! You get such delicate hints 
of spring ! The dried up old crone of a gera- 
nium, on your window-sill, has put forth a tiny 
green leaf. It hesitates, as if it would fold itself 
up again, it is such a modest, non-committal little 
leaf. Is it not one of Nature's diminutive prodi- 
gies ? You discover a single blade of grass shoot- 
ing sharply up from between two bricks in your 
backyard. Would a dozen acres of meadow-land 
delight you more ? 

Amaryllis has hung her canaries at the window. 
What shrill music they make ! They wake you 
early in the morning, and you see Amaryllis in a 
distracting robe de chambre. It has sky-blue 
rosettes up and down in front, and is tightened 
at the waist with a silk girdle. 

" What monarch but would give his crown 
His arms might do what this has done ? " 



A Word for the Town. 165 

You see the five cunning, white birds of Ama- 
ryllis's right-hand feeding the noisy yellow idiots, 
in the villa-like cages. The air is full of sweet 
messages from the south. You select a neck- tie 
of gorgeous colors. You go down town without 
your overcoat. You smile genially on Jones. 
You don't generally smile on Jones, for he lives 
next door to Amaryllis. You are good natured ; 
you cannot tell why. You kick a strip of lemon 
pefe^ off the curbstone, You are philanthropic, 
also, but you don't know why. It is spring ! 

After several weeks of torturing suspense, you 
conclude that Amaryllis must have gone to Na- 
hant or Newport. She has. The fair Capulet 
does not take her " cue " now, and the window- 
scene is a failure. Biddy feeds the canaries. You 
are not entirely miserable, though. 

It is midsummer. 

There is a shady side to the street ; there are 
parks and fountains pro bono publico ; there are 
Roman punches and strawberry ices at Maillard's, 
and a promenade concert at the Academy. You 



166 Sketch-Book. 

like music, and you spend your evenings, when 
you are not somewhere else, at the Academy. 
You hear Agnes Robertson sing. She captivates 
you with her woman's eyes and her boy's costume. 
You immediately hate her husband. You do 
more — you forget Amaryllis. There is a mari- 
time view from the battery, and a salt-sea breeze at 
Coney island, and certain leafy nooks over the 
river, where you can sip maraschino, or discuss 
omlette rouflde within hearing of the rich bass 
voice of the city hall bell. You can hire a boat 
at Whitehall and float down the Narrows, or you 
can sweep by the Palisades in the Thomas Powell, 
and catch a glimpse of the wrong side of Fred. 
Cozzen's house, at Yonkers ; and, little farther up, 
the cocked-hat gables of Washington Irving's 
" Sunnyside." You can drink lager-beer, and de- 
vour schweizer kese and pretzeln at Hoboken. 
You can also purchase a knot of flowers at the 
Sybil's cave. 

What an epitome of sweet things is a bou- 
quet! You have the grace and the goodness, 



Sketch-Book. 167 

the perfumes and the tints of summer-time, for 
a shilling. You have the delights of meadow and 
woodland bound together by an ell of claret- 
colored ribbon. You have a fragment of the sky, 
and a tangle of grass with merry red buds, such 
as Coleman and Shattuck like to paint ; you have 
dews, and stars, and sunset things ! You have a 
portable flower-garden. You can put it into your 
waistcoat pocket. You can give it to Chloe, who 
hasn't gone to Nahant. Or, better still, keep it, 
though it fade, for Amaryllis. 

The summer solstice is over, and the temptation 
has returned to town. She does not, indeed, hang 
her canaries at the open window, and your eyes 
are seldom ravished by a sight of that morning 
robe with the blue rosettes in front ; but, now and 
then, when you come home rather late at night 
you see the shadow of Amaryllis on the buff win- 
dow-curtain, and you are not wholly unhappy. 
Your existence becomes worth cultivating. You 
lounge in your lazy easy-chair, you fill your meer- 
schaum with fragrant Oranoko or May-Blossom, 



168 Sketch-Book. 

and picture to yourself the paradise that lies just 
the other side of that provoking curtain. Ama- 
ryllis has been to the Opera, and is robbing her 
heavy black tresses of their burning ornaments. 
You can see the shadow on the curtain lifting its 
arms. It appears and disappears, and tantalizes 
you. It is unlacing something, you dont know 
what — but you mustn't look any more. You re- 
member Keat's description of Madeline, as she dis- 
robes on St. Agnes' eve ? Ten to one you repeat 
the lines half aloud : 

" Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees ; 
Unclasps her warmed jewels, one by one ; 
Loosens her fragrant bodice ; by degrees 
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees : 
Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed. 
Pensive awhile she dreams." 

You will paint some such picture. Of course 
you should not. But the probability is you will. 

The time has come when you have to examine 
the thermometer to ascertain how cold you are. 
You are very cold when you find the quicksilver 
some ten degrees below zero; in fact, just twice 
as cold as you were before you obtained that know- 



A Word for the Towii. 169 

ledge. Your pitcher of water says click in the 
middle of the night, and you are tempted to throw 
your Loot at it. It is something mysterious and 
awful to have your pitcher of water express its 
opinion of the weather. When you get up in the 
morning, you discover some very bizarre pictvires 
on your window-panes. They are chiefly repre- 
sentations of polar scenery — weird, terrible, Ice- 
landic pictures. You look at them as you dress 
yourself, and think of Dr. Kane. 

It is Christmas time. Merry Christmas ? Ah, 
but it used to be some twenty years syne. It was 
fine, then, to loiter through the crowded streets, 
gazing into the shop windows — El Dorados of 
fancy articles, Australian lands of bon-bons and 
rock-candy. What visions you had of St. Nick., 
with his reindeer eqviipage on the house-top. You 
could hear the pawing of the silver hoofs. 

Something of the old pleasure in Christmas, 
something of the old faith in Santa Claus, Avarms 
in your heart as you stroll down Broadway with 
the chilly stars sparkling over head and the white 
spangles under your feet. 



170 Sketcii-BooL 

The street is illuminated with lights of a hun- 
dred colors. It is one long bazaar where you may 
feast your eyes with the riches of all nations. 

Turkish looms have been busy for you. 

Quarries have been opened and streams search- 
ed that you might look on clusters of precious 
jeAvels. 

The patient Chinaman has carved his dreamy 
fantasies in ivory, and the oily Esquimau has fash- 
ioned seal-skin snow-shoes for you. 

Here you have curious instruments, of brass 
and wood, and pearl, within whose tubes and un- 
der whose keys lurk passionate music — the spirits 
of joy and woe. 

There you have fantastic pipes from Tuscany, 
wines from Germany, sweetmeats from the Indies, 
and confections from Paris ; Malaga grapes and 
creamy bananas, and oranges that turned to gold 
■11 the warm air of Cuba. 

Your slaves in the East have sent you attars, 
and gums, and scented woods. What is there in 
all the climes, from 

" Lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon," 



A Word for the Town. 171 

to a marble mosque or a Chinese pagoda, that does 
not lie within your reach ? 

You are Haroun al Raschid in Bagdad, you are 
Ilaitalnefous, you are anybody you please, with 
the world's wealth heaped about you. 

Have the kindness to help yourself ! 

You wander throug-h the street in a midwinter 
night's dream. What do you care for the bleak 
wind, or the snow-flakes, or the people who jostle 
you ? You stare at the brilliant shops ; you do 
not know which to enter, for each one is more 
beautiful than the other, like the Khaleef 's forty 
wives. You pause at Tiffany's. Tiffany's win- 
dows are on fire with diamonds. 

All the water in the underground pipes, which, 
like huge arteries, traverse the city, could not 
quench the fire that burns in those stones. 

You flatten your nose on the plate-glass ; you 
see a necklace Avhicli you would like to clasp on 
Amaryllis's perfect throat ; you would also like 
to manacle her white wrists with those turquoise 
bracelets ; you would like 



m Sketch-Book. 

Listen ! High up in the belfry, in the rain, and 
the sleet, and the dark night, there is a nest of 
merry birds. They have quiet, airy hymns which 
they chirp on summer evenings. But how clam- 
orous and jubilant they are this winter night ! 
Why are their happiest, wildest songs kept for the 
snow and the sleet ? Why are they so joyous 
when 

" The sedge is withered from the lake. 
And no birds sing ? " 

Why, indeed, let us think of that. 

If I should ever move into the country it will 
be on one condition — that I take the Town with 



Miss Hepzibali's Lover. 



173 



MISS HEPZIBAH'S LOVER. 

A Seaside Sketch. 




1^^^ O one looking at Miss Hepzi- 
bah, in this year of our Lord, 
18 — , would suppose that Miss 
^g) Hepzibah ever had a lover. Un- 
til last summer, it would have 
►been true to say that she never 
had. 

There is, indeed, a vague sto- 
ry concerning a certain old young gentleman who, 
some ten years subsequent to the war of 1812, 
was imagined to have entertained a tender and p::- 
thetic feeling for Miss Hepzibah ; but as he nevei- 
told his love, and as concealment never appeared 
to have become apoplectic by feeding on his damask 



\ulP 



174 Skeich-Book. 

cheek, I am strongly inclined to doubt the tradi- 
tion. 

Miss Hepzibah was born an old maid. 

She -was born with the intention of never sacri- 
ficing her independence on the altar of matrimony, 
unless she should happen to meet with what she 
called her Beau Ideal. Until this miraculous and 
winning creature should make his advent, Miss 
Hepzibah refrained from fanning any minor spark 
into a flame. 

Miss Hepzibah vestalized. 

Now it came to pass that her Beau Ideal, 
(owing to various causes, among which may be 
placed the laws of gravitation) never turned up : 
for Miss Hepzibah's Ideal involved the possession 
of such an impossible catalogue of angelicisms and 
such a plentiful lack of human weaknesses, as to en- 
tirely shut out the whole race of Man. 

^liss Hepzibah's youth glided decorously away ; 
her prime came and went with the utmost proprie- 
ty ; epoch faded into epoch ; until, at last, there 
was a sarcastic yellow on the page of the family 



Mss Hepzibah's Lover. 175 

Bible, wherein was recorded, in large round char- 
acters, the date of her bu'th. 

She put on her spectacles one day, and found 
that the golden girls of her childhood had passed 
on. Little faces, with strangely familiar eyes and 
lips, grew up about her, and cold white head-stones 
whereon were engraved names familiar to her 
youth. 

She had become the last leaf on her ancestral 
tree ; she had also become the last leaf anybody 
would think of gathering. Not that Miss Hepzi- 
bah had lost any of her beauty, for it may be 
ti-uthfully said that she never lost an atom. 

But she had lost the charm of her teens, the 
magnetism of her twenties, the splendor of her 
thirties, and, it must be confessed, of her forties 
also. But while time had left in^'iolate the pecu- 
liar points of her person, which was all points, it 
had seen proper to work a remarkable change in 
her mind, and had led her to indulge in several il- 
lusions, to the supreme astonishment and conster- 
nation of her friends. 



m Skelch-Book. 

She had ceased to regard the animal, Man, with 
bitterness ! 

Indeed, she had grown to regard him, as a race, 
with such tenderness, that it seemed as if she in- 
tended, with the warmth of later days, to make 
the amende honorable for the coldness of her teens. 

To such an extent she carried her reparation, 
that Mr. Higgins, her second cousin, with whom 
she resided, felt it his duty, as a human being, to 
remove his Milesian gardener from the Vivian-like 
witchery of her presence. But Miss Hepzibah di- 
rected her attention to the colored coachman (a 
gentleman of a migrative turn of mind, who abrupt- 
ly graduated from Virginia one day,) and it was 
through her affability that he wa* ultimately in- 
duced to fall in love and elope with — the family 
plate. 

Miss Hepzibah now labored under the impress- 
ion that a very ornate and juvenile style of cos- 
tume became her figure and complexion. 

She dawned upon the world in light shotted 
silks and blossomy bardies. 



Mss Hepzibah's Lover. 177 

She also assumed, with the gorgeousness of ap- 
parel, the artless gaiety of a sea-side belle in her 
bloom. Her naivete and freshness were perfectly 
startling. 

" Cousin says I'm so giddy," she remarked to 
Clarence Adolphus, as they walked on the piazza 
of the hotel at Nahant. 

Clarence Adolphus was heard to reply : 
" Ye — yes, I think you are, werry." 
The affair with the colored coachman was the 
feather that broke Miss Hepzibah's second cousin's 
back. They had some low words in a high tone, 
and parted. Miss Hepzibah retired from the in- 
hospitable roof, and tacked a codicil to her will, 
leaving the bulk of her personal property to the 
" Seaman's Disabled Home Association." 

Miss Hepzibah resided in the enchanted city of 
^Manhattan during the Winter months ; but the 
Summer solstice was passed on the New Hamp- 
shire coast, in a cottage Gothique of her own, con- 
tiguous to a fashionable hotel. 

It Avas during the height of the watering-place 

8* 



178 Sketch-Book. 

fever, one year ago, that what happened did hap- 
pen. 

Miss Hepzibah had a lover ! 

After waiting for nearly half a century, the 
Coming Man came — not her Beau Ideal, to be 
sure ; she had long ceased to dream of him ; but a 
real flesh and blood lover, with faults and A'irtues, 
to whom Miss Hepzibah sometimes grimly alludes 
as " that person." 

The Atlantic House was crowded with all sorts 
of people — fops and belles, tinsel and gold : the 
broken merchant with his three thin daughters 
looking out, in smiling despair, for an itinerant 
Rothschild : the everlasting family from the South 
with a great deal of jewelry : the rich, obese old 
gentleman, who always reminds you of Pickwick, 
talks to everybody, loves fishing, is a favorite M'ith 
the young ladies, and calls the young gentlemen 
" sad dogs," slapping them heartily on the back, just 
like the merry heavy father in a genteel comedy : 
there was the small city clerk, putting on airs : 



Miss Hepzibah's Lover. 179 

the peripatetic artist, a veritable Bohemian, in a 
sensible slouched hat, making studies for studio- 
manipulation : the pale gentleman who corresponds 
with a metropolitan newpaper, and is said to have 
once had a joke in London Punch : the retired 
catholicon-maker, and several nondescript persons, 
with a happy sprinkling of pretty girls in racy 
basquines and distracting Godenskis. 

Among this motley crowd were two persons who 
figure in this chronicle. 

Mr. Philip Winter was a young lawyer, aged 24, 
with no end of money, and not the slightest ghost 
of a client. Mr. Winter was a gentleman of a 
good deal of " personal appearance," and seemed 
to be on very off-hand amiable terms Avith him- 
self, and a Miss Kate Brandon, of Brandon Fork, 
a blithe Kentucky girl (what pretty women they 
do get up in Kentucky,) who cultivated a blush- 
rose in either cheek, guarding the same with a 
pair of rather splendid eyes, which, when they 
looked at you, seemed to run up and down the 



180 Sketck-Book. 

gamut of your character, ascertaining just how 
many octaves you were. 

I should not omit to mention Brandon senior — 
Brandon padre — a courteous old gentleman and 
very slim, who read the papers all day on the porch, 
and looked as if he had tried to extinguish himself 
with his hat, nothing but two ears preventing it 
from resting on his shoulders. 

It has been intimated that Mr. Winter and the 
Kentucky beauty were on amiable terms. A 
chance overhearing of the following fragment of 
dialogue led me to that conclusion : 

Scene : The sea-shore : the sun, shorn of all 
its rays, attempting to balance itself, like an acro- 
bat, on the thin line of the horizon ; the Atlantic, 
with a languid lip, lapping long miles of snowy 
beach ; Mr. Philip Winter and Miss Kate Brandon 
lounging by the bath-houses, in one of which is 
the subscriber, getting himself up regardless of ex- 
pense. 

PhJ'p. — but I love you, Kate. 



Mss Hepzibah's Lover. 181 

Kate (^looking- out to sea) — Isn't that a fishing 
smack ? 

Philip. — Hang the fishing smack ! Won't you 
be kind once ? 

Kaie (opening those eyes) — Kind ? how ? 

Hiilip. — By being serious with me. 

Kate. — Nonsense ; don't bother me. I declare 
that's a fishing boat. 

Philip. — Miss Kate Brandon ! 

Kate. — Mr. Phihp Winter ! 

Philip. — Kate, I'm going back to New York. 

Kate (dryly) — Good-by ! 

Philip. — How you torment me ! Was there 
ever such a Kate ? Yes, one other, Petruchio's. 
She got tame, at last. But I know you love me. 
Haven't you told me so ? Did you not rest your 
lips, once, for a blissful half moment, on my fore- 
head ! 

Kate (trying to remember.) — I really forget. 
It must have been last week. ( With sudden con- 
viction.) Now, ivasii't it last week ? 

Pfiilip. (ivanting to eat her.) — I shall go quite 



m Sketcli-Book. 

mad some day ! Come, Kate, be good ; and let 
me kiss the cruelty from those 

Here the voices melted away, Miss Kate's musi- 
f^al laugh sounded a fairy chime, now and then, 
I'uintly in the distance. 

I immediately made up my mind with regard to 
the ultimate destiny of that precious pair. Youth 
and beauty, and the currency of the realm — what 
could be pleasanter ? 

Three nights after this gay glimpse into the af- 
fairs of Miss Kate and her special pleader, I was 
the luckless witness of another interview of a dif- 
ferent character, which was instrumental in forc- 
ing upon my understanding the baseness and du- 
plicity of the human race. 

The room I tenanted was in an L of the hotel, 
and my one window, with its twelve square eyes, 
looked plump into Miss Hepzibah's front garden, 
with the intention, I think, of staring Miss Hepzi- 
bah's Gothic cottage out of countenance. 

It must have been sometime near midnight. 
The intolerable heat had driven me to the open 



Miss Hei)zibaii's Lover. 183 

\viiuIo\A', wliere I filled a pipe witli Latakia, and 
blew rings of smoke out into the moonlight. I 
was engaged in this intellectual enjoyment when I 
heard Miss Hepzibah's cane rocking-chair creaking 
on the porch opposite. There, in the silvery shad- 
ow, sat Miss Ilepzibah, like a festive old appari- 
tion, bobbing to and fro, and cooling herself with 
a large palm-leaf fan. 

At that moment I saw Mr. Philip Winter walk- 
ing somewhat stiffly down the road. He paused 
at the gate, it grated on its hinges, and the young 
gentleman, passing through the arbor, stood before 
Miss Hepzibah. And this is what I saw and 
heard. 

Miss Hepzibah gives a little scream. 

Mr. Winter speaks to her in low musical tones. 

Miss Hepzibah listens to the same. 

Mr. Winter takes her hand with an air of infi- 
nite tenderness. 

Miss Hepzibah smirks. 

Mr. Winter raises the hand to his lips. 

Miss Hepzibah purrs. 



184 Sketch-Book. 

Mr. Winter whispers something in her ear, and 
then walks leisurely through the grape-arbor out 
into the road, Miss Hepzibah looking after him, 
fondly, like a Maltese cat. 

Could I believe my eyes ! I pinched myself, 
and said the multiplication-table (as far as I 
knew,) backwards and forwards : then tumbled 
into bed, thinking how the light-hearted and bonny 
Kate was dreaming a dream that would end in bit- 
ter tears ; and shaking my fist at the old wretch in • 
the Gothic cottage, I fell asleep. 

The next morning the anger flew into my fin- 
gers' ends at beholding Miss Brandon leaning cozi- 
ly on Philip Winter's arm, and caressing him with 
her large brown eyes. 

As the pair walked up from the beach, they met 
Miss Hepzibah, robed in ridiculous splendor. 

I watched the encounter without drawing a 
breath. 

Miss Brandon was making a bracelet of sea-kelp, 
and did not observe her rival : Miss Hepzibah gave 
a galvanic start ; and Philip Winter lounged by 



Mit^s Hepzibah's Lover. 185 

lier unconcernedly, as if she were a part of the 
landscape. 

I never saw anything more neatly done. 

That night the same pantomine and whispers 
were repeated on Miss Hepzibah's piazza, Miss 
Hepzibah seeming even more pleased than pre- 
viously with Mr. Winter's dramatic adoration. 

Now heaven knows that, though I seldom mind 
my own business, I never meddle with any body 
else's. But here was an aggravated case. 

I took Mr. Brandon by the button hole one 
afternoon, and disclosed to him the perfidy of his 
intended son-in-law. 

I never did a more injudicious thing. 

When I had concluded, Mr. Brandon bowed 
icily, and informed me that what I had told him 
was simply impossible ; Mr. Philip Winter was the 
son of his dearest friend, a friend of forty years' 
standing ; he loved Philip himself as if he were 
his own son ; and then intimated the pain it 
gave him (Mr. Brandon} to see a young man 
(obliquely me) dulling his faculties and blighting 



186 Sketch-Book. 

his prospects in life, by a too devoted adherence to 
Still Catawba, and other spiritous liquors. 

Miss Brandon, with a priceless tear hesitating on 
either eyelash, hinted with charming candor that 
there was, of course, one liar in the world who 
was greater than any other liar, and that that par- 
ticular liar was at present an occupant of No. 97, 
— my apartment. 

Mr. Philip Winter, after denying point-blank, 
that lie had ever laid eyes on Miss Hepzibah, as- 
sured me confidentially that if I and my traps (he 
alluded to my trunks) were not out of the Atlan- 
tic House within the brief space of two days,- he 
should take the liberty of pulling somebody's ears 
in a manner more violent than might, perhaps, be 
agreeable. 

I Avas wild with mortification. 

I thought of appealing to Miss Hepzibah herself; 
but Miss Hepzibah was evidently Mr. Winter's ac- 
accomplice ; I could hope for no justice in that 
quarter. 

Here, through mere kindliness of heart, I had 



Miss Hepzibcili's Lover. 187 

placed myself in an un amiable light, and probably 
inaugurated a deadly quarrel with a reckless man 
of the world. 

I sat in my chamber, the victim of the darkest 
melancholy. My pipe went out, and the moon 
wrapped itself up in a cloud. Everybody had 
gone to bed, the house was as silent as a tomb, and 
and there I sat, fe,ce to face with my own dai'k 
thoughts. 

I began to imagine that may be I was insane ; 
that the midnight interview on the porch, the 
whisper, the kiss. Miss Hepzibah, and everything 
else, were only the vagaries of a disordered intel- 
lect. 

Presently — as I sat there, falling out of one 
depth of gloom into another — I heard Miss Hep- 
zibah's garden gate creak cautiously. I stole to 
the window, hardly daring to hope what I hoped. 

I gave but one glance, and then rushed to Mr. 
Brandon's room on the opposite side of the hall. 
I seized that gentleman half asleep, and dragged 
him to my window. 



188 Sketch-Book. 

Mr. Philip Winter was kneeling gracefully at 
Miss Hepzibah's feet, in the act of kissing her 
very venerable right hand. 

There they were in the damaging white moon- 
light. 

" Now sir," I whispered, tremulous with tri- 
umph, " there 's some still and very sly Catawba 
for you ! " 

I considered that a neat thing at the time. 

There was not a drop of blood in Mr. Bran- 
don's face as he rested his hands on the window- 
sill, with two fierce hazel eyes fixed upon Miss 
Hepzibah and her lover. 

" Sir," he said, in a fearfully calm voice, wheel- 
ing round on one heel, " allow me to bring a wit- 
ness to this." 

"Certainly." 

He left the room and presently returned, accom- 
panied by an elderly gentleman, an aged fac simile 
of young Winter. I remembered being struck by 
the likeness, when he alighted from the stage-coach 
that evening. 



Miss Hepzibah's Lover. 189 

" This," said Mr. Brandon in the same unnatu- 
rally calm voice, " this is Mr. Joseph Winter. I 
wish to call his attention to those two persons on 
the porch." 

With this he pushed the elderly gentleman to 
the window. 

Mr. Winter somewhat perplexed, looked, started, 
and finally rubbed his nose with an impatient fore- 
finger. 

" Why," he cried, " that's my Phil ! Gracious 
me ! what is the boy doing ? What, kissin — 
good Lord, Phil is in one of his walking-fits ! 
He's subject to spells of somnambulism, you know, 
and goes walking about on ridge-poles and mill- 
v.heels, and things like that fool-woman in the 
opera. " You Phil ! " thundered Mr. Winter. 
"You Phil!" 

I heard Miss Hepzibah give a scream like the 
shrill whistle of a steam engine. It broke the 
charm of young Winter's slumber. He stood, be- 
wildered, leaning against the garden-gate, while 



190 Sketch-Book. 

his father from my window above was affectionately 
inquiring of him if he intended to be a born fool 
all the days of his life. 

As to myself, my existence became a burden u> 
me. 

" I'm sure " said bonny Kate, the next morning, 
one cheek burning like the under side of a peony 
petal, " I'm sure I can't think of marrying a man 
who doesn't know when he's asleep ! " 

But she did, nevertheless ; for the following au- 
tumn, in the small whitewashed church that sanc- 
tifies the primeval village of Rye, I heard these 
two people say the life-long words together. I 
then and there forgave Miss Kate's allusion to 
No. 97, and promised to wear her name like a 
rose in my memory, holding myself fortunate 
moreover, in having a loyal friend in Miss Hepzi- 
bah's lover. 

As to Miss Hepzibah herself, she is, I believe, 
still open to sealed proposals. Here's a chance for 
you, young gentlemen ! It would compensate a 



Miss Hcpzibali's Lover. 191 

man for many of the petty miseries of life to hear 
her talk about Philip Winter. 

She thinks he was not so fast asleep as he ap- 
peared to be ! 



192 



Sketch-Book. 



THE LADY WITH THE BALMORAL. 

The Impressible Man's Story. 

F you will, for the sake of drama- 
tic propriety, imagine that I am not 
myself, but my friend Mr. Tibbs, I 
I will tell you his story precisely as 
that facetious gentleman related it 
to me. Mr. Tibbs began and went 
on as follows. 
" By Jove ! " cried Mr. Frederick Markem, 
throwing back my chamber door with such violence 
that the knob went into the wall about two inches. 
I immediately upset my inkstand, for I am a ner- 
vous man. The least noise startles me. 




The Lady with the Balmoral. 193 

" O by Jove ! " continued Mr. Markem, stretch- 
ing himself out in the arm-chair. 

" Jove," I remarked, " was a very estimabie 
person, in his way." 

" I have seen women," said Mr. Markem, quiet- 
ly ignoring me, " I should think I had ; handsome 
women, too, by the streetful ; but never in my 
life did I ever lay eyes on such a glorious, superb, 
magnificent, divine out-and-out ring-tailed snorter, 
if I may be permitted to use the expression." 

I objected. I did not consider " ring-tailed 
snorter," whatever it might be, the proper phrase 
under the circumstances ; I did not know what 
the circumstances were ; it did not make any dif- 
ference what they were —there could be no cir- 
cumstances that would sanction such infelicity of 
language. No, I objected. 

Still Mr. Markem went on in an extravagant 
manner, describing a lady whom he had met some 
twenty minutes previously on the corner of Broad- 
way and Thirteenth street. 

Juno, Hebe and Eurydice (so far as Mr. Mark- 



194 Sketch-Book. ^ 

em knew them through Keightley's Mythology,") 
paled theu' mefFectual fires beside this later-day di- 
vinity ; and, as to the Venus de Medici — I quote 
Mr. Markem — she knocked her higher than a 
kite! 

I myself am not aware of the height which 
kites are popularly supposed to attain ; but, accept- 
ing his rodomontade at its proper value, I pictur- 
ed in my mind's eye the airy situation of the Ve- 
nus de Medici, and made no comment. 

The lady whose beauty had robbed Mr. Markem 
of what nature had not lavishly endowed him 
with, had, it seems rendered his destruction com- 
plete by sporting a red-and-black balmoral skirt, 
conveniently short enough to make a modest dis- 
play of the prettiest feet and ankles in the world. 

" You should have seen those feet," said Mr. 
Markem. 

Mr. Markem then launched into a dissertation 
on pedal extremities, drawing a comparison be- 
tAveen the feet of a Hong-kong belle and those 
of the unknown, much in the manner of the cele- 



The Lady with the Balmoral. 195 

brated comparison between Pope and Dryden. 
Thus : 

If the foot of Tai-ping-wang was small, that of 
the unknown was diminutive : if one was arched 
like an eyebrow, the other was bent like a crescent ; 
one was faultless and the other perfection. 

I was vastlv relieved when Mr. Markem at leno-tli 
retired to his own room to drown his restless soul, 
as he intimated, in the intoxicating bowl. The in- 
ebriating vessel so tragically alluded to was the 
bowl of his meerschaum pipe. In a few minutes 
such volumes of smoke came pouring through the 
key-hole of the door which separated our apart- 
ments that I rushed frantically into his chamber 
with the vague apprehension of finding him a mass 
of fire and cinder, bearing no distant resemblance 
to a half-consumed balmoral. 

" Pleasant, this ! " said Mr. Markem, emitting 
from his mouth a cloud oC smoke that would have 
done infinite credit t(J a moderately ambitious cra- 
ter. " It eases the soul so ! " 

I am an impressible man — nervous men always 



196 Sketch-Book. 

are ; and although Mr. Markem's description of 
the fair one witli the golden locks was entirely toe 
preposterous for a moment's thought, I lay wide 
awake half the night thinking about it. Then I 
sunk into a troubled sleep, only to dream that I 
and the lady with the balmoral were being smoked 
in an immense meerschaum pipe by a gigantic Mr. 
Markem. 

To disport with such trifles will the most vigorous 
minds sometimes condescend ! 

The next day, in spite of myself, I thought of 
Mr. Markem's adventure — if it is an adventure 
to meet a pretty woman. In fact, I did nothing 
but think of her and the tortuous dream of the 
previous night. The hot aromatic meerschaum, 
the lady with the balmoral, and the brobdignagic 
Mr. Markem, flitted through my vision all day ; 
and in the evening wLen I went to see Clementina 
— we had been engaged two weeks — I was medi- 
tative and unhappy. 

I felt that I was wronging Clementina. 

Two days after this Mr. Markem again rushed 



The Lady with ihe Balmoral. 197 

into my room. He had seen her — had ridden in 
the same stage with her — her dress had brushed 
against him — her dress ! Eastern perfumes had 
saluted his nostrils — the perfumes she used ! He 
had touched her exquisite finger-tips in passing the 
change ; and language was as milk-and-water to 
express his emotions. The Venus de Medici was 
again placed in an elevated position ; and several 
uncomplimentary remarks made relative to Mes- 
dames Juno, Hebe, and Eurydice. 

" By Jove, Sir," said Mr. Markem, " see what 
I have done ! " 

And he jerked his w^atch out so violently that I 
expcted to see the brass brains of that domestic 
animal scattered over the floor. 

" By Jove, Sir ! when she passed me her fare, 
two three-cent pieces, what did I do with 'oni but 
drop 'em into my vest pocket, and hand the whip 
two gold dollars instead, by Jove ! Look at 
'era ! " 

And Mr. Markem opened the watch-case and 
spilled the two bits of silver into the palm of his 



198 SkclclNBook. 

hand. Mere money — mere gold dollars, piled up 
as liigli as the top of Trinity steeple — could not 
buy those sacred souvenirs. No, Sir ! He would 
liave 'em put on a silk cord, and his children, in 
future generations, should wear 'em around their 
necks, and cut their teeth on 'em, by Jove ! Part 
with them ! Would I accept his heart's blood as a 
slight testimonial of his affectionate regards ? 

With this friendly offer Mr. Markem shut up the 
three-cent pieces in his watch, and restored it to his 
pocket. 

" When the lady got out," said I, hesitatingly, 
" did you follow her ? " 

" Follow her ? No, Sir ! Could I imagine for 
an instant that so ineffable a creature resided any 
where ? She's an inhabitant of the air — a denizen 
of the milky-way ! Follow her ? I was entranc- 
ed — petrified — knocked higher than a kite ! " 

I could not help asking Mr. Markem if he met 
the Venus de Medici coming down on his way up ? 
But this show of pleasantry on my part Avas the 
merest counterfeit of jocularity. 



The Lady with the Bahiioral. 199 

The second meeting, and Mr. Markem's conse- 
quent enthusiasm, worked like madness in my brain. 
I went to bed to lie awake for liotirs ; and on fall 
i!ig asleep to dream that I was crushed to death hy 
an avalanche of three-cent pieces which slid from 
the roof of a palatial mansion in Fifth Avenue. 

Then I was cast, heels over head, on an un- 
inhabited South Sea island, where the bananas and 
cocoa-nuts were stuffed with the same scarce metal ; 
and, being on the verge of starvation, I devoured 
a large quantity, and was about to die of indiges- 
tion when the breakfast-bell rescued me from that 
unpleasant alternative. 

I was miserable and feverish, and a cup of strong 
coffee at breakfast only made me more feverish 
and more miserable. 

I felt that I was doing Clementina an egregious 
wrong by continuing our present relations ; she 
had ceased to hold that place in my heart which 
only Mrs. Tibbs elect should occupy, and I had 
ceased to give her that constant adoration which 
only Mrs. Tibbs elect should receive. I determin- 



200 Sketcli-Book. 

ed to see her once more, and break the painful in- 
telligence to her as gently as possible. I dreaded 
the interview, for, as I have remarked I am a 
nervous man, and I hate scenes. But it was an 
imperative duty. 

Still, I delayed the heart-rending moment ; and 
every evening found me sitting with Clementina, 
who was all modesty and fondness, and gave me 
such intoxicating little kisses in the library that, at 
times, I was not quite so certain that I did not love 
her. 

Indeed I did, while I was with her ; but when I 
returned to my room, and was no longer in the 
entrancing atmosphere which always surrounds a 
refined woman, I felt that we could never be happy 
together. 

Clementina, I argued, is not so very superior to 
fifty other ladies of my acquaintance. It is tru»^ 
she has beautiful hair, fine eyes and teeth, a styli>ih 
figure, and a voice like Cordelia's, 

" ever soft, 

Gentle, and low : an excellent thing in woman ! " 



The Lady with the Balmoral. m 

She is bright, too, and can shoot off a repartee that 
snaps hke an enthusiastic fire-craker. But then 
tliese qualities are not peculiar to Clementina. 
There is the sarcastic Miss Badinage, and the 
fascinating Miss Bonton. 

To be honest, I was trying to convince myself 
that I wasn't a knave. But I was. 

In the mean time Mr. Markem had twice seen 
the ineffable creature of the milky-way — once on 
the street, and once taking lunch at Thompson's. 

I do not dare to remember how wretched I was. 
I gave my best razors to our old book-keeper at the 
office, and never ventured to trust myself within 
two blocks of the North River. I was irrevocably 
in love with Mr. Markem's sweet stranger ; and 
Clementina 

I nerved myself for a final interview with my 
victim. One afternoon, in calm despair, I dressed 
myself for that purpose. I had brushed my hat 
for the four hundred and seventh time, growing 
calmer and more despairing at each stroke, when 
Mr. Markem sailed into my room. 



m Sketch-Book. 

I am aware that " sailed " is not a happy expres- 
sion, but no other word will describe the easy, 
swan-like srace with which Mr. Markem entered 
my apartment. He Avas gotten up without any 
regard to expanse. Lord Dundreary was never 
so nobbily gantd. Solomon in all his glory was 
not arrayed like Mr. Markem. 

He was going to air his magnificence on Broad- 
way, with the hope of meeting the ineifable. 

" Tibbs," said Mr. Markem, familiarly, " be- 
hold ! — " the Mass of fashion and the mould of 
form.' By Jove ! if this sort of thing doesn't take 
her ! " 

" By-the-by, Markem, I am going down Broad- 
way. I'll walk a block or so with you." 

Mr. Markem hesitated. 

" O you are ? " 

" Yes." 

" By Jove ! now, I don't know about that. I'lii 
a trifle tender on this subject — tender for you also. 
If you should see her and become unhappy, it 
would be no use for you to — to — " 



The Lady with the Balmoral. 200 

And Mr. Markem picked out the ends of his 
cherry-colored neck-ribbon with a noli-me-tangere 
air quite delightful. 

" Oh ! of course not," said I. 

" Honest ? " 

" Honest." 

" Then, by Jove I I'll trust you. But, honor 
bright, Tibbs I honor brifjht ! " 

We sauntered out of Clinton place into Broad- 
way. 

I was very ill at ease, not only from the fact of 
walking with so gorgeous a person, but at the 
thought of meeting that woman, the mere descrip- 
tion of whose exceeding loveliness had filled my 
brain with visions like so much hasheesh. I was, 
moreover, somewhat ashamed of myself for hav- 
ing taken advantage of Mr. Markem's confiding 
nature ; and could not wring the smallest drop of 
consolation from the accepted assertion that all is 
fair in war and love. 

It was rather too early in ths afternoon, as Mr. 
Markem poetically remarked, for the flowers of 



m Sketch-Book. 

beauty to blossom in the garden of fashion ; so we 
dropped into Delmonico's, to flirt with a thimble- 
ful of Maderia and eat an omelette soufl^e, which, 
to my idea, is nothing but a heavenly kind of soap- 
suds. 

When we again sallied forth the fashionable side 
of Broadway was a perfect parterre of human lil- 
ies and roses. We walked slowly up town, look- 
ing earnestly among the eddying throng, for that 
divine perfection of a woman who had uncon- 
sciously made me the most miserable of men. 

We had reached Bleecker street. 

An omnibus on the crossing and an apple-stand 
on the corner hemmed us in. 

Mr. Markem suddenly grasped my arm. 

" There ! there she is ! " he whispered. 
. "Where?" 

" There ! " 

" I dont see her." 

" Why there, Tibbs." 

" Oh," said I, with bitter disappointment, " that 
is only Miss Bonton I " 



The Lady with llie Balmoral. 205 

" No, no — not she, but the one behind her on 
the crossing — the lady with the balmoral ! " 

" Why, you villain ! " I shrieked, " that's my 
Clementina ! " 

At the same time I gracefully upset the apple- 
stand, 

INIr. Frederick Markem drew his hat over his 
brows and rushed down Bleecker street. 

That evening he and his Coblentz pipes, his 
French lithographs, and his Florentine vases dis- 
appeared abruptly in a hackney-coach, in search 
of a new boarding-place. 

Clementina — now the blossoming Mrs. Tibbs 
— leans over my shoulder, and protests against my 
airing all this nonsense about " that odious Mr. 
Markem ; " but I have promised the article for the 
Esthetic Monthly, and I aih going to print it, in 
spite of the Lady with the Balmoral. 



Skelcli-Book. 




THE CUP AND THE LIP. 

A Cliristnias Story. 



'tV -^ ONG before General Washington 
...-^v -, . ' Ir-'-' snubbed a senile kino;, and set up 
l^iC<~^^ ' a coat-or-arms on Ins own account, 
MM^/^^^%^ there stood near the mouth of the 
<^ ^ "^^^^^VN^^ ^ Piscataqua river, a large square 
^A. J^ wooden building, that seemed se- 



o^ 



riously proud of having violated 
every known rule of architecture. 
It being just the sort of structure that would not 
admit of a cupola, it sported a very massive one, 
from which might have been seen the garrison- 
house at Portsmouth, and beyond, the white caps 
of the Atlantic, breaking in silver and azure on 
Newcastle Light. 



The Cup aud the Lip. 207 

Something like two hundred years ago, there 
dwelt between the walls of this eccentric habita- 
tion the following more or less interesting perso};- 
ages. 

Mr. Jeffrey Langdon (the Heavy Father of our 
drama.) 

Mrs. Mehitable Langdon (the Mercenaiy Moth- 
er.) 

And Miss Gervase Langdon (the Heroine com- 
ing to grief.) 

Mr. Langdon had once been a man of great 
wealth ; but a series of disasters, including a scalp- 
ing frolic on the part of the neighboring Wompon- 
sags, a playful tribe, had reduced his fortune to 
about forty acres of good land, the Langdon 
mansion, and the Langdon family. In the last 
was his greatest wealth — Gervase Langdon. 

I shall spare her the martyrdom of heroines. 
I shall not describe her. Never, since gentlemen 
v.^ere invented ; never, since the first author wet tlie 
first goosequill in the first ink-horn, preparatory to 
dashing off his first chapter, was there ever a he- 



208 Sketcli-Book. 

roine so hard to describe as this same Gervase. I 
mighty indeed, tell you something about the trim- 
mest figure, and the sauciest blue eyes, that ever 
fell to the lot of a Puritan maiden ; but then you 
would have no more idea of her than if I had 
done her in wax. 

The lads of the village were distracted about 
Gervase ; the old men looked at her sunny face, 
and immediately remembered their courting-days ; 
and even her rivals forgave her beauty, she was 
such a warm-hearted little buccaneer. 

It would take me all day to draw up merely a 
list of the hearts which this playful Lamb split in 
two, at divers times, from the moment she put on 
long dresses until her seventeenth ^ar. So I 
shall not do it. But at last Gervase herself came 
to grief, and it is at this momentous epoch that our 
curtain rises. 

It was snowing, as it can snow only in New En- 
gland. Great white feathers came floating dowu 
from the blank clouds, darkening the whole atmos- 
phere. Stone-walls, and roads, and barns, and flit 



The Cup and liie Lip. m 

comfortable farmhouses, appeared to sink gradu- 
ally into the earth, threatening to leave everything 
level. 

vVt one of the diamond-shaped windows of the 
Langdou house, stood Gei'vase, looking out at the 
snow. She was weeping and trying not to weep. 
The instant a tear came, she brushed it aside with 
a handkerchief small enough to be tlie personal 
property of a fairy ; but scarcely was one tear 
wiped away when another sprung up to take its 
place. Now, as a general thing I am not fond 
of Niobe. Women are not pretty when they cry. 
But please imagine Gervase. Imagine one of 
Eytinge's clear-eyed women looking out of a 
Gothic window by Vaux, upon one of George 
Boughton's winter landscapes. 

In the same room with Gervase Langdon was 
her mother, an oldish lady with sharp features, 
wlio sat by the wide-mouthed fireplace, toasting 
her feet in the face and eyes of two grotesque an»- 
dirons. While we stood outside, admiring the 
troubled face at the window, there had been a 



210 Sketch-Book. 

lengthy and stormy conversation going on between 
these two. We are just in time to catch the kist 
of it. 

Gervase has laid her hot cheek against the cool 
window-glass, over which the frost has woven a 
curtain, shutting out the bleak snowscape ; old 
Mrs. Langdon sits with her hands folded on her 
lap. It is truce between them. 

Presently Mrs. Langdon looks up. 

" Davie Howe's grandfather came over in the 
Mayflower. A proper good family is Davie Howe's, 
and very, very old." 

" So is he," said the Lamb at the window. 

There are none so deaf as those who won't 
hear. 

" He owns the new wheat-houses. He is a man 
of mark. He is as rich as " 

As he can be, Mrs. Langdon was going to sa}'. 

As he is ugly, Gervase w^as going to say. 

But neither finished the sentence. It was cut 
shoi-t by an interruption, and the interruption pro- 
ceeded from Gervase herself. 



The Cup and llie Lip. 211 

While Madam Langdon was exploiting Davie 
Howe's pedigree, Gervase had been unconsciously 
tracing something on the window-pane with one 
of her taper fingers. When Gervase's tearful eyes 
fell upon her handiwork, she broke out in a silvery 
ringing laugh, and pointed to the window. 

" What's that, child ? " cried Madam Lanjidon 
startled. 

" Only see ! " said Gervase lauo-hinf; throno-h 
her tears. [I shall not afflict the reader with a 
venerable allusion to April.] " Only see ! it is 
for all the world just like it ! " 

"Like what?" 

And this is what the Lamb's pearl of a nail had 
traced in the frosty glass : 




" Why, Da^-ie Howe's nose ! " shrieked Gervase. 
The enemy held up her hands in horror. 



m Sketcii-Book. 

At this moment Jeffiy Langdon come in from 
the barn. As he shook the snow off his long 
peruke, he looked at his Avife, and the following 
silent diologue ensued : 

His eyes. Have you told her ? 

Her eyes. Yes. 

His eyes. What does she say ? 

Her eyes. No I 

This is what Avas the matter. 

Next to the Langdon estate was Squire Howe's 
farm — the Lest tilled and most valuable tract of 
land in the township. This fact had frequently 
impressed itself on old Langdon's mind, but never 
so forcibly as when Davie Howe's son, who had 
Icen educated by his father's relatives in England, 
returned to the homestead to assist Davie in man- 
aging the establishment, and ultimately, to be its 
sole proprietor. Mr. Langdon looked at Gervase, 
and then at Richard Howe, and said, 

" They were made for each other." 

And when the old gentleman saw his roguish 



The Cup and the Lip. 213 

daughter flirting just a little with his rich neigh- 
bor's son, his heart was glad within him. But at 
the very moment when his hopes were brightest, 
and his heart was lightest, an event took place 
which rather interfered with his plans. 

Richard Howe died. 

Gervase was sony, as anybody is when anybody 
dies. 

Then old Langdon, like the philosopher he was, 
said to himself: 

" If Gervase can't wed Davie Howe's son — 
and she can't, he being dead — she can wed Rich- 
ard Howe's father." 

It was a brilliant idea. 

But Gervase failed to see it. 

In fact, at that time Gervase did not see much 
of anything, save Walter Brandt. It was not 
quite plain to me how this came about ; but one 
day as young Brandt stood looking at her with all 
his eyes, there was a tumult among the rose-leaves 
on Gervase's cheek ; and Gervase's heart went 
beating against Gervase's corsets in a manner mar- 



m Skelch-Book. 

vellous to think of. It was all over with the Lamb 
as quick as that. 

The Lamb flirted no more. 

The village lads and lassies knew wdiat th:iL 
meant. 

So it came to pass that she did not weep 
so much for Richard Howe as she might have 
done under different circumstances. 

When Mr. Langdon was informed of these 
things by an observant neighbor, that gentleman 
was wroth overmuch. 

" Walter Brandt," he said, " hath not land 
enough for a crow to stand on. I'll hear no more 
of it ! " 

Then there was trouble in the family. The 
doors of the Langdon house were closed against 
Walter, and the Buccaneer was forbidden to hold 
converse watli the Outcast. 

"I cannot get rich here," said Walter Brandt. 
" I'll seek fortune elsewhere. Will you be true to 
me ? Will you marry me, if I come back in 
three years, Gervase ? " 



The Cup and the Lip. 215 

" Ay, if you come back within fifty years ! " 
said the brave hearted little Buccaneer. 

So they kissed, and cried, and parted, as many 
a pair has done before and since and will again. 

Walter had been gone over two years. Only 
one letter — which Gervase wore right next to her 
warm heart — was all the tidings that had reached 
her from the Avanderer. In those days, however, 
people seldom got more than three or four letters 
during their entire lives. She made the most of 
one, and waited patiently for the happy day ; and 
would not have been inconsolable if Davie Howe's 
name had not become a familiar word in her fami- 
ly. Then Davie Howe himself, under favor of 
Mr. Langdon's sanction, pressed his suit and made 
himself very disagreeable. In the meanwhile 
Gervase had been treated with great tenderness by 
her parents, w^ho used all their gentle eloquence to 
persuade the Lamb to drink at the same stream 
with the old wolf. But she wouldn't. 

One day things took an unpleasant color. 

" Widow Brandt's son is coming back to the 



m Sketch-Book. 

settlement," said neighbor Goodman to neighbor 
Langdon. 

Mr. Langdon wheeled about on one heel. 

" Coming back ? " 

" Yes." 

" How d'ye know ? " he asked, sharply. 

" My brother has writ it to me from Holland," 
said neighbor Goodman proudly. And he drew 
out the letter. 

" Have you told this to any one ? " 

" Nay, I have this moment received the docu- 
ment." 

" John, you shall have that strip of hay-land at 
your offer." 

" Thank you, neighbor Langdon heartily." 

And Mr. Langdon made a feint of hurrying off; 
he walked two paces, paused, and said, in a ner- 
vous manner : 

" And, John, you'll not need to mention — 
that affair — the letter — you know. And, John, 
how long would it take to go to Holland ? " 



The Cup and the Lip. 217 

He meant how long would it take to come from 
there. 

" Three months or more," said John. 

Mr. Langdon went home. 

" Gervase shall marry Davie Howe this Christ- 
mas," said he. 

" But I wont ! " said that young lady, when 
Madam Langdon broke the subject to her ; and 
then ensued that combat which ended in headache 
and inglorious tears. 

As the old folks sat by the fire that night, and 
as the coffin-like clock on the staircase doled out 
eight, Mr. Langdon started and looked up at his 
wife. 

" Four years ago to-night " 

Then she too remembered. 

Four years ago that day, their son Will was lost 
off Newcastle Light. Four years ago that night, 
the waves threw his body, scornfully, on the rocks. 

It was a sorry anniversary for the Langdon fam- 

Hitherto Mr. Langdon had tried by dint of pa- 
10 



218 Sk<1ch-Book. 

tient aro-ument to convince Gervase that she loved 
Davie Howe ; but when he found that Walter 
Brandt would probably come to the relief of the 
distressed garrison before many months, he changed 
his tactics. One day he would expostulate Avith 
her solemnly, then he would take no notice of the 
poor child for a week. This was hard to bear. 
It was cruel not to be spoken to ; it made Gervase 
feel like a poor relation at her father's table. But 
even that was not so heartbreaking as to have him 
coax her, and plead with his eyes — the eyes 
which used to look so lovingly on her. That was 
bitter almonds. 

" I wish I were lying in the churchyard ! " said 
Gervase white as death. 

" You must marry Davie Howe ! " cried Mr. 
Langdon, out of patience. 

In the meantime the color went out of her 
cheeks; her eyes wore a lack-lustre look; sli- 
went about the house like somebody's unhappy 
shadow ; and the lips that used to bud and blossom 
into laughter, had forgotten how to smile. Heart- 



The Cup and the Lip. 219 

ache was " the grim chamberlain that lighted her 
to bed." 

Gervase had not a soul to help her in this une- 
(jual bombarding. Now and then she scattered 
tlie old people with a gun loaded to the muzzle 
with feminine grape and canister, but not often. 
The enemy saw tliat she was weakened, and plied 
their shot unmercifully. Her guns hung fire now. 
The small sarcastic shells which she threw at the 
allies' outworks broke Aveakly in the air, and did 
no damage. She had parted company with Hope, 
and the enemy's lines came down on her. What 
could Gervase do ? She tried to die ; but I have 
observed that people never die when they want to. 
At last she threw herself on her mother's bosom, 
and said : 

" I dont care wliat becomes of me — sell me if 
you will. But," she added, with a show of her 
old spirit, " isn't there anybody who will give 
more for me than Davie Ho^Ye offers ? I seem to 
be going very cheap ! " 

This rather dashed the old folks. 



Sketch-Book. 

But they sent for Davie Howe. Davie Howe 
leered, and kissed her hand, and Gervase shrunk 
back, as if an asp had stung her. 

It was Christmas Eve. It was freezing cold ; 
the snow had commenced falHng shortly after twi- 
light ; flake after flake lighted on the ragged trees 
and the stiff fences, like millions of magical white 
birds. 

It was Christmas Eve. There were bright 
lights in the Langdon mansion ; the windows glared 
out on the darkness like great sinister eyes : Ger- 
vase was to be married. 

The peparations for this event were on an ex- 
tensive scale. There was to be music ; and young 
ladies in powder, and crimson farthingales, and 
high-heeled shoes, were to float languidly through 
monotonous minuets ; there was to be a feast, and 
a charade, and a puppet-show, and heaven knows 
what not. 

The ceremony was to take place at eight. At 
seven o'clock the rooms were already crowded. 

Garmented and garlanded for the sacrifice, Ger- 



The Cup and the Lip. 221 

vase Langdon sat up stairs surrounded by a bevy 
of fair young girls, who, for the first time in their 
lives, did not envy the belle of the settlement. 
Her pallid face and faded lips told rather a terrible 
story. But she looked enchantingly, from the 
highest wave of her blonde tresses down to the 
diamond-studded buckles on the white satin slip- 
pers. 

Her costume, ladies? 

Silk, and things. 

As she sat in the large, heavy-carven oak chair, 
two pretty feet were just visible underneath her 
tremendous hoop — two supple ankles crossed co- 
quettishly. The young men of the village, passing 
by the half-opened door, beheld them, and grieved. 

It was a quarter after seven, and expectation was 
on tiptoe for the arrival of the bridegroom. 

For several days prior to the time appointed for 
the ceremony that ancient gentleman, Davie 
Howe, was in a fever with regard to his bridal 
costume, which was intended to go a trifle beyond 
anvthino; that had been seen in the Colonies. 



%m Sketch-Book. 

It was to be a gorgeous affair, gotten up with- 
out regard to expense, or anything else. The vil- 
lage under 1 mean tailor, sent it home piece- 
meal. First, the coat, blazing scarlet, richly trim- 
med with gold braid, and faced with watered-silk. 
Next, the long-waisted waistcoat of maroon cloth. 
Then the white silk hose. Then the faint-blue 
satin choker. 

But the small-clothes, the grand, elaborate, black 
velvet knee-breeches, that marvel of human art, 
— there had been some mistake in them. 

First they were too tight, and a seam was let out. 

Then they were too large, and a seam was tak- 
en in. 

And then they didn't fit at all. 

In the mean time, the happy day had dawned, 
and Davie Howe's small-clothes were not finished. 
Twenty times that morning did Davie send a mes- 
senger to the distracted artist ; and twenty times 
was the messeng-er sent back with the assurance 
that the garment should be ready in season. 

Six o'clock arrived, and the knee-breeches did 



The Cup and tlu^ Lip. m 

not. In a fit of phrenzy, Davie Howe mounted 
his horse, and dashed over the glaring ice to the 
village, three miles off, with the unalterable deter- 
mination to scalp the luckless tailor. 

Half-past seven came, and the elder Langdon 
grew uneasy. What could have occurred ? And 
then a quarter of eight dropped in naturally 
enough, like a bore to dinner. The guests looked 
perplexed and amused ; eight o'clock struck 
satirically, and a half-suppressed titter went round 
the room. There was an awful pause. 

Mrs. Langdon smiled upon the people in a help- 
less, ghastly manner. 

The bride's maids, up stairs, lounged in groups, 
Avhispering : Gervase sat staring vacantly at the 
carpet, the fingers of one hand unconsciously play- 
ing with the carved oak-leaves and acorns on the 
arm of the chair. 

A measured step was heard on the stair wa}'. 
The women ceased whispering, and glanced to- 
ward the door. Gervase lifted her eyes, 

Walter Brandt stood looking at her, 



m Sketch-Book. 

That this was his ghost, come to reproach her 
on her bridal-night, was the idea that flashed 
across Gervase. She shrunk back in the chair. 

Walter Brandt stood beside her, and, without 
speaking a word, drew from his finger a well-worn 
gold ring, which Gervase had given him three 
years before. This he dropped in her lap, and 
walked wearily away. 

Then Gervase sprung from the chair, and 
cauorht him in her arms, and — I know it was ter- 
ribly unmaidenly of her, but she kissed him di- 
rectly on the mouth. 

That instant, Miss Langdon, down stairs, gave 
a scream. 

" Davie Howe hath slipped up on the ice, and 
broken his leg," was the intelligence conveyed to 
Mrs. Langdon from the village. 

" Poor Gervase ! " said somebody. 

But there were some ill-natured persons there 
^vho thought, may be, that Gei'vase would n't 
weep herself to death. 

Mr. and Mrs. Langdon, with two or three more 



The Cup and the Lip. m 

intimate guests hastened up stairs to break the 
news to the bride. They found that bereaved 
young creature quietly leaning her head on Wal- 
ter Brandt's shoulder ! 

"Monster! " shrieked Mrs. Lancrdon. 

Her meaning remained a profound mystery. 
Whether she alluded to Walter, or Gervase, or 
poor Davie Howe himself, never transpired. 

Don't be a fool, my dear," said Mr. Langdon 
in persuasive tones to his wife. " It is clear that 
Providence hath been against us in this matter. 
I have nothing to say. The girl may wed whom 
she likes." 

I trust this remark was disinterested on Mr. 
Langdon's part, but suspect that neighbor Good- 
man had something to do with it. 

" He 's made a mint o' money," remarked Good- 
man, sotto voce, to Mr. Langdon. 

There was no wedding that night in the Lang- 
don mansion ; but as there was a bride waiting, a 

banquet spread, a charade to be solved, and a min- 
10* 



m Sketcit-Book. 

uet to be danced, the affair was not long delayed. 
So was Davie Howe left out in the cold. 

A stitch in time saves nine. This is true of wed- 
ding garments and all terrestrial things. 

It would be an anachronism for me to wish Gex'- 
vase a merry Christmas at this late day ; for the 
Lamb was taken tenderly to the fold ages and ages 
ago. It would be superjfluous, too ; for I believe 
that Gervase and Walter, and all true lovers who 
have died, are enjoying eternal Christmas, some- 
where. 



THE END. 



NEW BOOKS 

And New Editions Recently Issued by 
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(LATE RUDD & CAKLETOX.) 
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LES MISERABLES. 

(ADVEETI8EMKNT.) 

This remarkable portraiture of society of the nineteenth 
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twenty-five years of his hfe, is divided into five distinct 
novels, under th-e general title of Les Miserables. Each 
lovel is complete. They will be published and sold sepa- 
rately in uniform binding. 

They are entitled : — 

I. 
FANTINE. V 

C V 

n. j m, 

COSETTE. MARIUS. 

IV. 
IDYL OF THE RUE PLUMET 

AND 

EPIC OF THE RUL SAINT-DENIS. 

V. 
JEAN VALJEAN. 



The price of the original French edition is $3 00 for 
each novel, in paper, while the American translation is 50 
cents, in paper covers, and 81 00 in cloth binding. 



*^* The Publisher will send any one of these novels by mail, 
poftCiige paid, on receipt of price. 



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